


A Broken Wheel

by SingleWhiteCatLady



Series: The High Country [1]
Category: Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Appendicitis, Blood and Gore, Bodily Functions, Dag grows medicinal herbs, F/F, F/M, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Like really sick, Max Needs A Hug, Max is having a bad week, Medicinal Drug Use, Recovery, SICK!Max, Sickfic, Toast becomes even more badass, Vulnerability, War Boys grow plants too!, Wasteland surgery, because I like Toast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:07:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5800135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingleWhiteCatLady/pseuds/SingleWhiteCatLady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Sick Max being taken care of by Furiosa... I obliged... May have gone overboard. Hmm.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Steady Breeze and Clouds on the Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> This is the prompt!  
> http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=28098#cmt28098
> 
> This is my fill. 
> 
> In my head three of the Vuvalini that were thrown off the rig survived. Because if Nux could survive it, and Max survived the wreck of Nux’s car, they sure as hell can! They stole some rock rider bikes and made their way to the Citadel with only minor injuries. 
> 
> Their names are as follows. (*The two we see survive in the movie. I gave them names because I couldn’t for the life of me find their actual names. I must not have looked in the right places, but now I’m attached to these.)
> 
> *Mari= The medic  
> *Moira= Mari's sister and assistant, also knows about tracking, weather signs, and map making.  
> Sorcha= Knows about poisons and chemicals and foods  
> Dunny= Black Thumb  
> Xana= knife expert, Keeper of tales. 
> 
> It's my first time, be gentle!

**ONE;**

 

He knows it’s bad, he knows because he remembers something like this. Ages ago, too long.

 

A kid, little more than six-thousand days old. Tall—too tall, stood almost three hands over Max. Thin with dark skin and a short scruff of hair down the middle of his head. Carried a gun bigger than Max with a monster of a scope on it. He’d called himself Noah and smiled with blindingly white teeth.

 

Noah was leading his family. Sister, mother, grandmother, and a handful of travelers he’d collected like dust as they walked. Hoping to reach Bartertown. Someplace they could find work, or purpose.

 

They hadn’t much food, just enough to get where they were going, but they were very well armed.

 

Max had traveled with them or three days on foot because a band of raiders had punctured his fuel line, left a slick of guzz in the sand and took all the bullets and guns from him they could find. Left him with a head wound lying unconscious and bleeding in the dust. Luckily it wasn’t a total loss. He wasn’t stupid enough to keep all his guns in one place. He’d had enough guzz to make it into familiar territory, but that line wasn’t going to fix itself, so he’d hidden his car and started walking. Came across Noah and his group. Or, more accurately. Noah had put a bullet into the sand six inches from Max’s foot.

 

Max had frozen in place, hands up, eyes searching the red earth, fear sour in his throat.

 

Noah hadn’t taken his weapons, hadn’t taken his supplies, just stood there after unfolding himself from behind a dune, gun on Max and waited.

 

Nothing happened. So Noah jerked his chin toward his group and they kept walking.

 

Max didn’t like people. Didn’t like the possibility that he would somehow, indirectly be made responsible for them. But Noah seemed collected enough, seemed in control… Until Max asked if he was OK.

 

Noah walked with a limp, hand on his belly.

 

“It’s the gut rot,” He’d said. “I’ve seen men die in two days… Others it can take a week or more.”

 

“Dysentery?”

 

Noah shook his head, “No… The gut—it ROTS. Sudden pains here,” He lays his hand over the right side of his abdomen. “Not so bad when you push but when you lift it away,” His eyes widened and he made a whooshing sound between his lips. “Nothing for it.”

 

Max remembers vaguely that it had once had a name, knew it had been something simply corrected Before… But now. Now this kid would die in just a matter of days.

 

“So, we leave,” Noah waved a hand at the sand; “My family will be safe in Bartertown and I will let the sand reclaim me.”

 

Max hadn’t stayed to see it happen, but he knew it would soon. Noah could barely walk by the time they got to Bartertown. His mother and one of the men in the group traveling with them under his arms, his mother cries silently and pats her hand on his chest.

 

Max traded for the parts he needed, a little Guzz and was gone.

 

It’s been more than two-thousand and fifteen days since then. How many exactly he doesn’t know, but he knows the days since he’d left the Citadel. Knows the hours and the feel of their passing.

 

Six-hundred and ninety-four days.

 

Six-hundred ninety-four days and Max wakes up with a sharp unrelenting pain in his belly. He curls around it, shocked, thinks maybe it’s his kidneys again—more than once he has been forced to hide away near water sources and drink until he was sick to flush out the little jagged pearls. But that kind of pain comes and goes, this does not. The pain is sharp and encompasses the area around the little dimple at his waist. That place that usually stays caked in dust and dirt and sometimes confuses him for absolutely no reason.

 

He tries to stay calm, breathes through it and convinces himself it’s just his bowels. Not enough water, maybe a bad lizard or his bean paste has gone off.

 

He rolls toward the sand on the other side of his blanket and chokes on bile.

 

The voices rise and fall like a tide, his heartbeat growing in his ears like the sound of approaching engines. Adrenalin like flames in his veins. It’s wrong. Something’s wrong!

 

_Help us, Max!_

 

He rolls to his hands and knees, fast, frantic—shoves his things into the passenger foot well of the truck he’d managed to salvage and is gone. It's not a bad truck, not a good one either, but it does what it's supposed to do. He’d found it deep in the wastes, managed to get the bike he’d taken from the Citadel into the back and enough guzz into the tank to take him near enough to the closest town that he could trade the bike for more. The bike was fast, but he was raw from road rash thanks to his ghosts and the pressure of the deteriorating seat between his legs was unbearable after so long.

 

Fifty-two days with the truck and now this.

 

He drove hunched forward gripping his belly, lips between his teeth, eyes on the rising sun.

 

He stopped not ten minutes later, hands shaking and pressed hesitantly around his stomach, relief blossoming only for a moment when his tentative prodding delivered no change to the pain.

 

He continued driving for about another hour, skirting south around the edge of the mountains. It was about then he realized the pain was shifting, at first he thought nothing of it, decided it had to be his bowels.

 

He climbed out and was sick again, collapsed shaking onto his hands and knees and watched the thick sludge of bile and fluid wick away into the earth. Dizzy and breathless he rolled onto his shoulders, hands curled protectively around his middle.

 

Had to be his bowels. Had to be. Why else would it be moving? He wedged the tips of four fingers into his abdomen, trying to massage the obstruction free and that was fine. The tenderness wasn’t too greatly affected but when his hand retreated…

 

Breathless, shaking, if he hadn’t been so dehydrated he would have been in tears, knees drawn toward his chest, throat cracked on a shout. Dry sobs and the foul taste of sick in the back of his throat.

 

Gut Rot. Nothing for it.

 

He knows what awaits, knows there is no avoiding it. So, he decides to do what he can. Too much valuable material to just drive until he’s dead. Too much potential use.

 

Maybe this—this surrender is his redemption.

 

Supplies, water, food, guzz, and the truck. All his weapons, his very body once the infection had run its course. Maybe he would find his salvation this way. Bones and flesh ground to pulp and mixed with the rest of the waste to fertilize the soil, bring a little more green back to the world.

 

Yeah, yeah that had to be it. Processed and stripped down to protein and water and chum, spread amid the tender green shoots, nurturing even as he decayed.

 

What use really, what good would he do driving out into the salt and letting his corpse rot away in solitude?

 

Recycling, yeah, that’s what it was called. Recycle…

 

It takes a while to lever himself up, the pain has sapped all his strength and he has to stop frequently to pull and draw himself against the side of the truck and to his feet. Limping isn’t much easier, but it is faster.

 

Driving is another matter entirely. Fear bubbles up in him, chokes the air from his lungs, fills his head with questions and anger and phantom smells of perfume and soap and shoe polish.

 

The voices and faces swim continually, growing worse and worse until he’s snarling; “You’ll have me soon enough!”

 

He drives all day, and as long into the night as he dares.

 

Four days, by his reckoning. Four days to get to the Citadel. If he has that long. If not, then he’ll die trying.

 

Nothing for it.

 

The moon isn’t quite full, and there are clouds sweeping too fast over its pale face. He can’t sleep. Feels that if he were to try it would be a disappointment to wake up. Why not just let himself go peacefully?

 

Peacefully… Was that ever really a thing? Or was it something he’d made up to keep himself functioning.

 

The pain doesn’t relent. It seems to lessen a little if he lies on his left side facing the back of the truck’s seat, but whenever he shifts or moves it ramps up again. He starts sweating some time before dawn, chills and nausea, but he has nothing left to vomit up but bile and even that is thick like old fuel.

 

He wants to be wrong. Wants so badly to be wrong. He presses his stomach and the pain grows. Curses and curls in on himself like a dying leaf.

 

By mid-day he’s trembling, by night-fall he can’t walk. By morning he’s exhausted and sick and moving is damned near impossible, but he forces it. Forces himself up and behind the wheel. Canting to the side protectively around his belly and the growing, hideous HURT of it.

 

Faces cycle out beside him in the cab. A child, a woman with brown hair and no face. She speaks to him with no voice, words burning into his mind like the infection burns into his insides. A white hot poker jammed into soft quivering flesh. Merciless and scalding.

 

He drives all night, rues morning because the only Guzz he has left is in the tanks lashed into the bed of the truck. The Guzz he needs to get him to the Citadel is back there and he can’t get to it.

 

_Move._

 

**_MOVE._ **

 

He tells himself he can see it on the horizon, a green blur in the silver red haze of the desert heat. Tells himself he can see people walking back and forth.

 

_Max._

_What are you doing, Max?_

_We’re waiting… Where are you?_

 

He pops open the door and it takes an eternity to get one foot on the ground, he clings to the steering wheel, clings to the door—to the bed of the truck. Sweat rolls off his brow, but beneath his jacket he’s freezing, wet at his neck and chest and under his arms, wasting the last of the moisture in his body, but shivering all the while.

 

They’ll find him like that he thinks, dry-freeze. A papery husk, fragile and liable to shatter and blow away to ash at the smallest touch.

 

He has a length of hose, thankfully—doesn’t have to heft the cans out of their spot, not yet. Syphons out as much Guzz as he can get into the tank. Doesn’t realize until he’s easing back into the truck that he can hear the distant rip of engines and the rhythm of gunfire.

 

He squints, feels like the waves of heat from the sand and rock are living flames. Like memories of the Old World, devoured by fire.

 

He’s burning.

 

Everything is burning.

 

He drives.

 

He sees Buzzards in the middle distance. Vague spiked shapes amid the dunes, but they seem occupied with something further south so he tries to ignore them, manages it for a while. That is until a shadow looms over him and he sees something dark, visible over the crest of a dune to his left.

 

The blackred of weathered steel, long and elegant with plate like protrusions along its spine. Serpentine.

 

His first thought is simple, fantastical.

 

_Dragon._

 

It seems to grow larger and larger until he realizes it’s not growing—it’s getting closer and he’s on a collision course to sideswipe it.

 

The dune falls away and Max comes abreast of a rig. Easily the size of, if not bigger than the War Rig, streamlined and terrifyingly beautiful in the deadly lines of it. Banners twist and flap from two sweeping spines of metal along the rig’s top, two lengths to each pole. Green with four great white hands. The Rig’s horn blasts, a long sustained deafening note followed by two quick ones, and the rig swerves at his side, cutting a parallel path.

 

It’s magnificent and Max is entranced, feels the world grinding slow as it eclipses the sun. The horn blasts again, deep, low and Max feels the world come free of its axis. His head is floating, heart beating hard in his chest as the rig puts on speed and overtakes him, swinging in front only for a car he hadn’t even known was there to swing right into him.

 

It’s angled forward, hunched up in the back like a defensive lizard and bristling with firepower. An arm plunges in  through the window, fingers hard and thin and tipped with sharp metal claws. Powerful grip wrapping around his throat and squeezing, a gun to his temple and a roar of rage.

 

Max sees a face. Young, brown hair a wild braided crest back from the center of her brow. Wide brown eyes shining in shock amid a black slash of grease framed in green and the hand around his throat retreats. He has only impressions now, vague and drowned out by the silver clouds of dust and sand kicked up by the rig’s massive wheels. Sound is thin and distant.

 

He hears his name born on the wind. Confusion, hope. Sees her leaning from a lancer’s perch on the car as it overtakes him as well, swings around him to his other side.

 

Then another car, similarly built but sporting a young man, chalk white with green painted on his throat and chest in a V, higher on the back of his head, to the middle of his ears. He has blonde hair, bristled on the sides and flapping on the top and a stripe of black across his eyes.

 

The boy’s lips are moving, smiling, but Max doesn’t hear it, not really. He’s staring at the back of the rig, all the pale faces gazing down at him, some with stripes on their arms, others with V’s on their chests. Some still painted like skeletons.

 

He can’t catch his breath. There is a noise behind him in the bed of the truck the thud of a body and he turns to look, feels the wheel slipping in his hand and tension grows in his chest. Numbness creeping up on all sides. He turns back to the road, steadies his grip and tries to keep up. He’s boxed in and they could crush him. He has to get out. Has to escape. He can't go back! He won't!

 

There is that face again, familiar, grinning broadly. Her lips move, but Max only hears whispers.

 

_Max, is that you? MAX! It’s… Max?_

 

Her smile fades, confusion. Fear.

_Max?_

_MAX!_

 

The door opens and he catches it, abandons control of the wheel, sees her feet lifting free of the running board. Hears a low drone, tires on sand and tarmac, voices. A shrill crackle shaped like his name. His body tries to be sick, or maybe he’s trying to get out to put more guzz in the tank, he isn’t sure, he’s not in control of his hands anymore.

 

Everything’s fading.

 

Nothing for it.

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0


	2. We Happy Few

**TWO;**

 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

 

He wakes to the sound of a horn blast, quick onetwothree and a hard long fourth.

 

He tilts his head, sees a discarded canteen and slimy mess all over his supplies in the passenger foot well. It’s on the seat and his arm and in his mouth. He can see the niche where the glove box used to be, but now serves to hold his ammunition. The window is open, wind blowing in and he can see up the sheer face of one rocky butte. More green and white trails of fabric blowing in the wind. A green blur. Blue sky.

 

Everything comes back at wrong angles, voices skipping and spinning, phantom giggles and screams of agony. He’s trapped on a broken wheel thudding and rolling along and he doesn’t know why he’s still spinning. Why hasn’t he flown apart yet?

 

_Max._

_Max, stay with me. Stay—_

_Where are you going, Max?_

_There’s no escape now._

_We’ve got you now, Max. We’re coming for you._

 

There’s a hand on his leg and when he swivels his head he can see her behind the wheel. She’s got his legs on her, one tucked behind her hips, the other across her lap, the black and green of her paint is smeared around her eyes, drips like fountains on her cheeks. Her lips are parted as she breathes, they move, words falling from her mouth but they don’t make it to his ears.

 

Then it’s dark and the air is cool, they’re traveling through a tunnel, the growl of the engine is almost deafening and then it’s bright and nothing makes sense. Nothing… Nothing makes sense anymore.

 

The truck’s engine revs and cuts around the Rig, Max sees silhouettes staring down at him from within a penumbra of sunlight and settling dust, the flash of green eyes and a shocked face.

 

The truck rumbles and bumps across something and there’s the sharp noise of a wounded animal. Agony across his middle, a half sob.

 

_It’s OK. Max, we’re getting help, stay with me._

 

 _Stay, Max. Stay—_ laughter, malicious wails. _We’ll have so much fun together._

_MURDERER!_

 

Darkness surrounds him. Cold hands on his face and neck, pressure against the back of his shoulders and head, weightlessness.

 

Nothing.

 

0-0-0

 

She lunges out of the rig and chases the truck, catches up just as it bounces onto the lift, hears the broken cry echo against the stone around them.

 

The people on the ground stare, wander over to help unpack the salvage.

 

Nobody tries to climb onto the lift. Furiosa jogs onto it, marches right to the passenger door of the truck and pulls it open, eyes wide and searching, heart in her throat. She hadn’t expected him to come back. She hadn’t been happy but she’d accepted it. There was little else she could do truthfully. When she’d heard word up the length of the rig that the scav in the beat up truck was HIM…  She’d expected something different. Not this. Not the exquisite heat of his skin and the feverish tremors. Not the pallor or sour sick stench of vomit.

 

Blood maybe, bullets lodged between his bones. But not this.

 

They didn’t know what it was. Was it a plague? Could the man who had helped supply them with hope, now be a harbinger of death?

 

“He kept mumbling, something about rot, and he was hunched over his belly,” Toast is moving, sliding from between his legs and out of the truck, She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts up at the faces peering down from the treads; “Someone go fetch Mari! He’s very sick! Tell them it’s the Fool!”

 

A boy with a tangle of hair the color of rust and a single green stripe around his neck nodded quickly and darted away.

 

By the time the lift stopped Mari was dodging around the cars, eyes wide, hair flapping behind her. “What is it? How bad?”

 

“Fever, sweats, vomiting… Toast said he was holding his stomach.”

 

Mari forms her hands to his face and throat, shoves them under the collar of his shirt. She nods at two boys carrying a ladder on which they’d tied leaves of foam from old car seats. “Get him to medical.”

 

The Fool didn’t move, didn’t so much as take a swing at them as they drew him out of the truck. He whined, a hopeless kind of noise and his fingers twitched but that was the extent of his reaction.

 

“He’s dehydrated,” Mari muttered pinching one of his nailbeds. “Could be stones.”

 

Toast shook her head; “He kept saying something about rot, said ‘nothing for it, have to recycle’.”

 

“He’s delirious.”

 

Max started retching again, halfway down the corridor but nothing substantial enough to require heaves that violent came out. Just bitter yellow gall. His eyes rolled wildly beneath their lids, mouth open and gasping against his shoulder. He wasn’t lucid when his eyes snapped open, there was a glassy appearance to them, and his pupils were too large. He made a wailing noise, low and inhuman and struck out with all his limbs. Kicked one of the boys holding the makeshift stretcher so hard in the wrist it almost broke.

 

He was in a rocky passageway, pipes and the smell of damp earth. Exhaust and grease. His nostrils flared in distress, teeth grit and his arms swung in wide arcs. He was being chased. They were going to brand him—take everything from him they could—

 

“DOWN! PUT HIM DOWN!” Furiosa shouted, knows panic when she sees it.

 

The boys practically drop the stretcher and he goes down hard, rolls and balls up, kicks out at Toast and Mari blindly and scrambles backward with a snarl and an aborted howl, one arm going around his middle. He makes it halfway upright, twisting on the balls of his feet— chokes, _screams_ and grabs at Furiosa’s legs as he falls. She hits the wall and goes down voluntarily, curls her metal fingers in the fabric of his jacket and hauls him closer, brackets him in with her body, pins him with his head a heated brand against her breast, flesh fingers tangled in the shaggy mess of his hair.

 

“Max! Max—it’s alright! We’re trying to help.”

 

He strains, muscles and tendons bulging in his neck and back, catches the fabric of her shirt between his teeth and wrenches his head back and forth as if trying to rend flesh from bone. All it does is pull the fabric askew and he bites out a whimper and goes still, his strength spent. Gasping around the torn fabric and bloody corners of his lips.

 

Mari is suddenly right beside her, hands on him, trying to unfold the stone like clench of his muscles. She coos and rubs his shoulder and pries his arms up from around his stomach.

 

His eyes crack open to slits, rove around dizzily, lids seeming to be too heavy to keep apart.

 

Mari strokes the flats of her hands down his middle, every so often she glances to his face for reaction.

 

She gets it. His face contorts and his body jackknifes. He shouts, snarls and tries to fight off Furiosa’s gripping limbs, but can’t manage it.

 

Mari looks up and meets her eyes, lips compressing, “Get him up… Quick. We’ve got to cool him down.”

 

It’s a battle to get him up again, takes all of them to wrestle his bulk back onto the stretcher. Sacrifices of belts and scarves to tie him down. He thrashes and shrieks until he has no voice left, no strength and goes deathly still, chest heaving, eyes rolled up to the whites. He yells and twists and lashes out when they get him to medical, when cool water touches his skin, but eventually he stills.

 

He comes back to himself some time later amid a wave of agony, the world around him feels cold—he hasn’t felt something this unbearably cold in too long. Much too long, it is both a relief and a shock, because if he’s cold something is wrong.

 

For a few moments he has no recollection of the past five days, the drive, and his encounter with Toast and the Rig. Inhales sharply and lashes out, eyes thrown wide. He grabs the first thing he comes into contact with, can’t make himself move for fear of where he is and what’s happened.

 

He knows burns—terrible burns— don’t feel hot, they leave you feeling only cold. Perhaps the truck exploded and he’s lying in the sand with all his skin burned off, waiting for the sun to cook him alive.

 

He sees fire dancing behind his eyes, burning oil splashing against pale tender skin— Children running, their flesh on fire, eyes sightless and mouths open, too fresh to know they’re already dead—

 

“Max, it’s alright, just breathe,” A hand over his brow, pushing his hair back, trailing copious amounts of moisture. She makes a sound, like sand blowing against glass, like fire, like water flowing over rocks, “Shhh.”

 

The room is swaying and dipping, he is unhinged, presses back against the solidity behind him searching for purchase, for balance.

 

“Okay, keep fanning, keep going, it’s working,” A woman’s voice from somewhere other. He has no sense of direction.

 

Max closes his eyes, feels sick from all the motion, becomes more so when he can FEEL his body spinning, his head in one direction, his body in another. Revolving, tumbling like a meteor.

 

A wet cloth wipes across his jaw, down the side of his neck and up the other side. It brushes his lips and he can taste the moisture, cool and flavorless. Not a single hint of taint or contamination. He tilts his head toward it like an infant, whines when he is denied.

 

The barrier behind his shoulders shifts and something cold and metallic brushes the side of his neck.

 

His eyes open again and time has passed, how much he’s uncertain, but the world doesn’t feel as if it’s spinning so violently any longer. There are three boys, young in various shades of white and brown with slashes of green and black thrown in. They’re holding large amber colored woven mats shaped vaguely like spear heads, lifting them up and down, up and down. Fanning. One of the boys stops and trades places with another that had been seated against the far wall.

 

Three women in light clothes are moving around him, peeling up strips of cloth laid over his body and replacing them with chilled wet ones.

 

It takes him a moment to realize he’s naked, draped strategically in thin wet linen and he can see long leather clad legs stretched out alongside the lengths of his hips, bracketing him in. He sees the rounded stump of an arm resting against his chest. It’s not his own, even though a momentary jolt of fear goes through him that it might be. His hand twitches beneath its swaddling and the fear evaporates.

 

He aches and the sharp pain in his belly has intensified to the point that he fears looking down, sure he’ll see a length of red hot steel protruding from his abdomen. A lightning bolt skewered through him by the hands of some dead god.

 

“You’re tense, are you awake?” a cold rag makes a swipe across the back of his neck.

 

He tries to grunt in the affirmative but the sound is lost, just a crackle from his dry throat. He pushes the swollen tip of his tongue over his lips, tastes stale blood, tries to find moisture but what he encounters seems to evaporate instead of offering relief.

 

Warm breath puffs against the side of his head, “We know what’s wrong… How long has it hurt like this?”

 

His brows knit, “I’ve been here?”

 

“About half a day.”

 

He nods jerkily takes a breath and tries to push out the sound; “Five days.”

 

Mari’s face is grim, she crouches at his side and meets his eyes earnestly; “It’s an infection, on the inside.”

 

“Gut Rot,” His voice finally cracks, it feels like he’s exhaling dust he’s so thirsty. “Nothing for it—“

 

Mari shifts uncertainly and looks at her two counterparts. “If the infection hasn’t escaped into your abdomen—if it’s contained… there might be something we can do.”

 

He doesn’t understand, pulls his brows down and growls.

 

“Inara, the mother who taught me—she did it. More than once. If the infection hasn’t leaked out, I can try.”

 

It doesn’t click and he can feel the woman’s frustration, but he just doesn’t understand what she’s saying; “I didn’t—‘would be a waste to die out there,” He swallowed a jolt running through his body at the catch of his tongue on the inside of his throat. “Brought the t-truck… supplies… take them.”

 

The person behind him makes a choking sound and passes her hand over his head. She speaks softly, hushed; “I don’t think he’s hearing us.”

 

“He’s hearing more than you think,” Mari leans closer and tries again, breaks her words down. “There’s a treatment. A way to fix the Gut Rot… As long as you haven’t been sick too long, I can fix it.”

 

His eyes focus on her face, brows pulled in and his hands open and close; “Fix it?”

 

“It’s like any infection… I have to get it out.”

 

“Out.”

 

She nods, her words don’t come out all at once, “I… Have to cut it out.”

 

He shudders, “Cut…” He tosses his head, seems to contemplate struggling if the quickening of his breath and the arch of his bare chest upward are any indication. But he deflates, shakes his head back and forth, growls.

 

“If I don’t do it soon there won’t be anything I can do…”

 

“Gut wounds… can’t heal a gut wound,” A sharp breath; “Takes so long to die.”

 

Mari passes a hand over his head and he shivers at the contact. “Before they called it Appendicitis,” She says, keeping her voice low and even, “It was common, hundreds of people had it, very few died of it.”

 

The name rings a bell and the corner of his mouth ticks up; “’s ‘at all?”

 

Mari flicks her eyes to Furiosa’s, sees the hopelessness in them, then turns back to the man in her grip; “Yes, that’s all…” She gives his hand a squeeze; “If I can fix it I will… As long as it isn’t complicated you should be alight in about ten days.”

 

His eyes have fallen shut but his brow crinkles in thought, tongue pulling at his cracked lower lip again; “Can’t… can’t die on the salt… ‘s a waste. Selfish…” He shudders, face crumbling and calls out in a whimper; “Furiosa?”

 

“I’m right here,” She chafes his arm, “What is it? What do you need?”

 

“The voices, they’ll take me… M-my body,” His throat clicks, “In the garden—will I kill all the plants?”

 

“No,” She shakes her head, tries to put on a smile when he peers up at her through slit lids. “You won’t kill the plants.”

 

He seems to relax.

 

Her voice drops in urgency, “Max, I need you to answer me. She’s going to try to fix it… If it can’t be fixed what do you want us to do?”

 

He looks at her evenly, as if perplexed by the question when he was sure he’d told her the answer already; “The plants… Noah went back to the sand… I—I’ll feed the plants,” He hummed, eyes falling closed, “I’ll be OK.”

 

He didn’t say anything else, maybe a hum, or a grunt, but his eyes stayed closed. Resigned, as if at peace.

 

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	3. And He Wore the Stars Strung 'cross his Brow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [WARNINGS IN CHAPTER NOTES!]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter contains graphic descriptions of wasteland surgery.
> 
> Poor Max.

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**THREE;**

 

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Mari was moving, shooing the fanning boys out of her way as she pushed into the hallway, “I need water, lots of water and clean pots to boil it in… Mirrors, or sheets of polished metal. Lanterns… We’ll need lots of light.”

 

Ten minutes and boys were filtering in and out, four carrying two large pots and water from the kitchens, others pipeworks and guzzoline for fires to boil it on.

 

Mari and Moira stood with their heads bowed together, palms up whispering while the boys moved the supplies into the cutting room. They stayed like that for a moment then separated. Mari to supervise the placement of their operating room, Moira toward Furiosa.

 

“Are there any others with universal blood?”

 

Furiosa shook her head. There had been. One of the milking mothers, but she’d died almost a hundred-fifty days ago. One of her pupils had blown wide during dinner and she’d collapsed. She hadn’t woken again and went quietly two nights later with her sisters around her.

 

Moira’s mouth compressed; “He’ll be weak when this is over. If it’s possible to complete he’ll be in a fragile state for the first three or four days.”

 

“Just do what you can.”

 

Moira nodded, “If there’s nothing to be done for him, I’ll—“

 

She clenched her teeth. “I’ll do it.”

 

Another nod and silence.

 

Mari reappears with a shallow basin of water and a ball of soap. She shoos the boys away from Max and pulls over a stool to sit on, wedges the basin between Max’s knees and peels away the gossamer from his belly. “Gotta shave him. Hair gets into the wound it’ll kill him.”

 

Furiosa nods, watches in mute fascination as Mari wets and cleans him in a wide stripe from hip to hip, scrapes off the hair with a straight razor and wraps clean dry linen over him to keep out the dust. Then she sits back and shaves her own arms and the small tufts of hair on her knuckles. When Moira approaches she does the same.

 

Sorcha appears briefly, brings each of the women and medical boys a chunk of flatbread wrapped around greens and seasoned bean paste. She sits by Furiosa and Max, takes over wiping his face and neck while Furiosa eats, then afterward cups her palm against her jaw encouragingly before she leaves.

 

When the water begins to boil in the cutting room Mari and Moira scrub their hands and arms and rinse, start sanitizing their tools, blades so slick and clean they look unreal. They line them up in a mesh tray and submerge them in the boiling water for ten minutes, then splash them with iodine and rub, then back into the boiling water and more iodine.

 

The table is scrubbed clean and overlaid with a woven mat and a linen sheet. A boy, older than the others darts into the room with a lamp, an ancient electric thing with a fragile bulb and a long cord that trails out to frayed ends quickly spliced together onto a car battery. More boys come in carrying pieces of mirror and polished steel or aluminum. Mari directs them where to stand and Moira comes for Max.

 

His body is limp, responds only with whines and groans or twitches of his limbs. His eyes crack open once he’s on the table and Furiosa is standing over his head with her hand on his jaw. He peers up at her tiredly and tilts his head, brushes his lips against the inside of her wrist. She knows it doesn’t mean anything, he’s just searching for relief anywhere he can find it. Water, the chill of her skin—she doesn’t know, but she feels it long after she’s pulled away, a phantom burn and she wants to scrub it away but can’t make herself do it.

 

“Here it is,” A small boy rushes in. He has three green slashes drawn on each cheek, and a long line down the middle of his nose. He’s carrying a small brown bottle. “Crank found it… Wotsit do for people? Thought it was for engines!”

 

Moira chases most of the boys out, the ones who remain are holding reflectors.

 

Furiosa stares at the bottle; “Ether?”

 

“It’ll knock him out, so he’s not in any pain… Just don’t get to sniffing it or leave the bottle uncovered.”

 

Furiosa looks down at him, sees the dull comprehension in his eyes, feels it in the tremble of his body.

 

He looks terrified.

 

“This is going to help you sleep… No pain. And when you wake up it’ll be over,” Moira holds the bottle away from herself and presses a pad of cloth over the opening, tilts it to let a little fluid spill then puts the lid back on quickly.

 

Max hesitates at first, tilts his face away and feels Furiosa’s fingers curl against his jaw.

 

She bends close, eyes commanding, hisses into his ear; “You need to save your strength… If she just starts cutting with you awake it could kill you. We don’t have anybody to give you blood. You need to be calm so you don’t bleed so fast.”

 

He goes still, resigned, and lets his head be tilted back to center.

 

“When you wake up it’ll be over,” Furiosa meets his eyes evenly and wills it to be the truth. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

 

“Breathe deep and slow,” Moira holds the cloth up, hovers it over his mouth and nose half a moment before lowering it.

 

He manages half a breath before his brows pull down and his eyes roll, blinking rapidly. He makes a surprised sound, almost fearful and after a moment goes limp, eyes shuttering closed.

 

Moira leaves the cloth over his face, nudges Furiosa’s foot with her own, “Are you staying?”

 

Furiosa shakes, nods and takes the bottle of ether.

 

“Just a few drops every so often, not too much or none of this will matter.”

 

Mari is already moving quickly, peeling back the covering on his stomach and spilling iodine across his middle a bright red splash of it, Furiosa feels it’s a preview of what’s to come.

 

“Alright,” Mari says sternly; “All of you Studies find a place, don’t touch NOTHING unless you scrubbed your hands, got it?”

 

Three of the four boys crowd closer, one hangs back near Furiosa to watch the administration of the ether.

 

Mari glances sidelong at the boys holding the reflectors; “You boys can watch if you want, but if any of you faint you’ll have me to answer to,” She practically snarls at them.

 

Some hide behind their reflectors, others watch with keen eyes and bated breath.

 

“Alright, here we go.”

 

It happens quickly, before Furiosa’s prepared. She’s too busy staring at his stomach, the unbroken, iodine stained skin, the few small flecks of old scar tissue, the rails of his lower ribs barely visible beneath the flesh. Mari and Moira are moving almost silently unless they’re instructing the boys to lift their reflectors up higher.

 

Mari presses the point of a blade into his belly and makes a long deep cut. Furiosa can’t help but watch as it takes the blood half a moment to well out of it.

 

Moira swipes it away with a towel and Mari makes another cut, pushes her fingers into the mess and waits for Moira to clean the gore away before she settles herself and makes another, deeper and deeper.

 

Max doesn’t so much as flinch.

 

Furiosa watches his face, his eyelids. Can’t bring herself to focus on what Mari is doing because it feels wrong. So, she keeps the stump of her arm pressed to the side of his neck to monitor his pulse and breathing. It’s shallow and slow. She can’t remember seeing his face so relaxed. Maybe when he’d fallen asleep in the War Rig, but she can’t be sure. He always carried tension, she could see it in the little creases on his face, the pale flesh inside them where the sun can’t penetrate.

 

“Gotta be careful when you make the cuts,” Mari says quietly to her boys. “Always follow the same path, slow and careful or you’re no better than a butcher!”

 

Furiosa has seen human bodies sectioned out for the shredder. And finds it nauseating that it’s practically the same motions. Slice, slice, slice. She turns away, focuses on Max’s face and the minute tremors running through him. Any sign at all she can find that he’s alive and they aren’t killing him.

 

“Alright, I’m through… You want to check first, run your fingers ‘round the inside make sure nothing’s grown together, no lumps, or anythin’,” A pause, “No adhesions, good… Take a whiff… Nothing like rot or bowel, means there’s no leaking. Good sign. Get the spreaders.”

 

Furiosa glances up again, sees Moira hooking vaguely L shaped bars into the wound and PULLING in opposite directions, as if she intended to rip him in two and—

 

There is a deep, bloody black place between the spreaders and one of the boys holding a reflector at Max’s other side makes a burping noise and ducks behind his mirror. Another makes a low noise in his throat; “Lookit the blood!”

 

“HUSH!” Mari snaps. Her fingers are slick and red and she pushes her hand into Max’s abdomen, face scrunched. “That’s the large intestine, small intestine… I need more light over here.”

 

The boys move without direction. Years of reflecting light into engines and cramped alcoves and they know just how to make it happen.

 

Mari hums, her brows scrunching, everything is still for a five-count, “Where is it… I—I don’t see it. Should be right there on top. Moira?”

 

Moira bends closer and peers in with her nose wrinkled.

 

The smell is starting to filter up. Earthy and animal. Blood and the dark, secret, internal places of the human body.

 

It smells like a slaughterhouse.

 

“Careful… Look under. Gently. Sneaky little bastard might be hiding.”

 

Mari’s hand slides in a little farther. Max’s eyes twitch.

 

Furiosa almost drops the bottle uncorking it, dribbles a bit over the cloth and watches the tension fade from Max’s face. He looks significantly paler than he had moments ago.

 

“Ah, there he is… Hiding behind his cecum,” Mari’s face goes tight and she exhales weightily; “God, look at it.”

 

Moira grunts; “The size of a sausage!”

 

Furiosa’s throat closes off and she looks up, expecting the worst, but instead Mari draws a plush, bloody, glistening loop of intestine out through the opening in Max’s stomach, gently cradling something distended and shaped vaguely like a finger. It’s hidden behind a veil of fibrous flesh and mottled pink and red and dark purple with spots of white and yellow, pustules ready to rupture at any moment.

 

“Furiosa? I need that basin, the little one at my elbow.”

 

She reaches for it.

 

“DON’T! Your hand, your hand’s not clean. Get the grabbers!”

 

She contemplates plunging her metal hand into the boiling water and forgetting the grabbers, but thinks better of it instead, closes her metal fingers on the long tongs protruding from inside one of the bubbling pots and takes hold of the edge of the bowl with the steaming pincers.

 

One of Mari’s boys takes it and turns, holds it while Mari nudges the infected finger of intestine into the basin. “See this? That vein? You’ve gotta close it off before you can do anything,” She motions with one finger. Furiosa turns away, returns to Max’s head and tangles her flesh fingers in his hair, bows her brow against his own. His breathing has begun to quicken, but he isn’t moving.

 

“Good, now you boys watch. This’s gotta be quick. It could pop any second.”

 

“What a mess.”

 

“Where’s the scissor?”

 

“Don’t let his guts dry out. Push it back in a bit—“

 

“Can’t you see I’m cutting?”

 

“You don’t have to be so snippy!”

 

“I’ll show you snippy.”

 

“Glory of the feckin’ mud, at least it hasn’t ruptured yet,” Moira mutters half to herself.

 

Mari says something about sutures, then a moment later asks for a prod and Moira motions with her chin.

 

“Scat, where’s that burner?”

 

Scat, the boy who has been hovering over Furiosa, points to a soldering iron on the table behind Mari. One of the other boys turns and carefully collects it.

 

Furiosa wrinkles her nose and breathes through the stench of burning flesh.

 

The next instant. “Right, get this thing out of here, I need to clean him up.”

 

Furiosa looks up, sees the basin cradled gently in one of the medical boys hands. He’s moving toward her, turns his face up to her curiously she takes it before she’s even thinking. Wants to see this THING that’s nearly cost Max his life, sees blood and tissue and that poison bit of him lying there with one of Mari’s silver clamps on its neck.

 

It’s about the length of her hand and as big around as Max’s thumb but she wonders how something so small in comparison to the rest of him, could possibly have had the potential to kill him. She wants to burn it and piss on its ashes.

 

There’s a hard twitch under her stump and when she realizes what’s happening she shoves the basin back into the boy’s hand and splashes more ether across the mask. “Shit—“ It doesn’t work immediately, Max’s eyes flutter and his head tilts, pupils blown wide. “Shit!”

 

“Furi—“ Mari says in warning, Moira has lessened the slack on the ‘spreaders’ but it doesn’t make a difference. Two of the four medical boys have sprawled themselves over Max’s legs and Scat is reaching for an arm.

 

Max breathes once hard, like an aborted shout and inhales in a wheeze—

 

He goes quiet after a moment with an audible sigh of air escaping through his mouth and nose, his body relaxes, eyes fluttering closed and still. His breathing is wrong, quick and shallow. His skin is unbelievably pale beneath the tan and stain of dust, and when she looks toward Mari again there is blood everywhere. It’s up to their elbows and smeared across his stomach, staining the sheet on both sides of him, dripping into the floor. All the pristine tools they had taken such care in cleaning are splattered and soiled. So much red amid the brown and dusty gold and gray of the rock. She wants to be sick.

 

“Keep him under or this will end badly,” Mari says with a hint of a threat.

 

Furiosa nods, chastised, has no idea how long she’s been sitting there, only that the ether is wafting up her own nose and making everything fuzzy and indistinct.

 

Moira and Mari speak in low tones. A mixture of water and iodine is flushed through Max’s insides twice, pumped out by a thin piece of tubing, siphoned and sucked clean by a little squeeze pump in one of the boys’ bloody hands. It runs across the floor in a dark puddle. Smells salty and metallic and a little like death.

 

Furiosa doesn’t know how much more time passes, but when Max’s lids flick again she reaches for the bottle only to be stopped by a call of her name; “No, let him wake up, he’s been down too long as it is, Ether can cause fluid to build up in the lungs, he needs to wake up and get it out before it settles.”

 

Moira takes the bottle and Furiosa looks around for the first time in what feels like an eternity. Her body aches from standing hunched for so long, her neck is tight and her head feels at once heavy and impossibly light.

 

The reflector boys are all sitting, rubbing their arms and necks and backs and Max’s stomach is heavily bandaged, already bruising. They’ve bound him tightly, threads and strips tied together above his opposite hip to keep pressure on the wound. All four of Mari’s boys are collecting the bloody tools and carefully scrubbing them in cold water and soap, splashing them with iodine and setting them aside to boil. Furiosa can see flecks of Max’s blood splashing onto their pale smooth chests and hairless arms and for a moment she doesn’t see boys—free of clay and paint and dressed in pale trousers and aprons, she sees War Boys, who they would have become if Joe had not been overthrown. She sees their eager faces twisted into hate and bloodthirst and desperation.

 

“Easy now,” Moira says, “It’s the fumes. Always difficult when you’re right up there with them.”

 

Mari has a smear of red across her pale tunic, she’ll have to scrub it for a while to get it out; “Need to get him out of here and someplace warm, last thing he needs now is a chill,” She turns and reaches for a ball of soap, starts scrubbing the clotting blood off her hands and fingers. “Wit!” She barks and one of the boys at the sink rushes over patting his hands dry on his apron. “Get those Orderlies,” she jerks her chin and he darts out of the room, comes back a few moments later with two young men and the stretcher.

 

“Get him up to the vault, no stops, no bouncing,” Mari says urgently to the smaller of the two Orderlies.

 

Moira is unfolding a blanket over Max, humming at him soothingly. “Furi, go with him… Keep an eye on him until we get this cleaned up. No water, no food, keep him warm, try to get him to cough.”

 

She nodded numbly, followed the stretcher as the boys carried him out.

 

By the time he was through the ward and in the hallway he was shaking in earnest, breath reduced to frantic little sips of air.

 

Six levels.

 

They had to go up six levels. Each step is a mile. Her head clears without the lingering fumes or the smell of blood and viscera and she can focus. Keeps her eyes on the stretcher, on Max’s face and his arm dangling limply off the side; his eyes are squeezed shut, mouth open, chin pushed up searching for air. His brow, upper lip, and neck were dotted with sweat. It saturated his hair, turned it dark and matted it to his scalp.

 

They passed under a light, a ruddy glow of contained flame and she saw how gray his skin had become, his lips a pale bluish color and every breath was the shadow of a sob.

 

She was frightened. Remembered the days after Dag’s labor, how the normally pale girl had become translucent, the blue of her veins visible through her flesh. As if, should she stand in the sun, you would be able to peer through her like a scrap of paper.

 

Toast was in the hallway when they made it. The others lingering near the hydroponics beds in various states of dress and consciousness.

 

Furiosa was disorientated, the dome was dark and the room sparsely lit. Hadn’t it been daylight? Where had the sun gone?

 

The sisters had pushed the two beds in the lower room together, covered them in clean sheets and every blanket they could spare.   


“Did they get it? Will he be OK?” Toast said in a hushed tone, walking beside the stretcher with concern in her dark eyes.

 

“They got it,” Furiosa didn’t recognize her own voice, “They got it but he lost a lot of blood and there’s nobody that matches him.”

 

“He needs a sugar solution,” Dag said quietly. She darted off, rubbing sleep from her eyes to go about preparing it.

 

Furiosa planted herself on the edge of the bed beside Max, layered the blankets and sheets over him. She laid a flat, round cushion over his stomach for protection from his mindless pained squirming and threaded her fingers through his, squeezed back when his hand tightened and his brow tilted to press helplessly into her knee.

 

He held his body tight, too tired and pained to curl in on himself, shaking from shock and chill. He blinked dazedly, pupils too big, lips too dark, struggled to draw breath.

 

“You’ve got fluid in your lungs,” She said low, tried to keep her voice even. “I know it hurts—I know, but you’ve gotta get it out,” She nudged the cushion a little higher with her stump, “Put your arm here and push. It helps… try to cough it out.”

 

His head flopped on the pillow and his arm dragged up, fingers twitching against the frayed dark upholstery. He made a few aborted wheezing noises and started shaking anew.

 

“Mari got it out but you have to help now, we can’t do this for you.”

 

His lips parted and a sound escaped, shivering and broken, fingers curled weakly into her own, bunched like talons in the frayed dark fabric of the cushion. Pale wet tracks from the edges of his eyes through the dust on his temples. 

 

“Max.”

 

_Max?_

_I found you, Max. No more running!_

 

And the cold teeth of darkness took him.

 

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	4. If His Chest Had Been a Canon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [WARNINGS IN CHAPTER NOTES!]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains explicit use of illegal drugs for medicinal purposes. 
> 
> [Also, I will not be posting chapters on Wednesdays and likely not Sundays either. Wednesdays is because I watch Supernatural and can't focus on anything but that afterward, and Sundays because I'm usually doing homework for school all day. So, I will see you again on Thursday!]

 

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**FOUR:**

 

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The vault was a familiar space, one the girls had avoided at first; The initial weeks after the Run; when only four cars from the remainder of the War Parties returned, heavily loaded with War Boys, all seeking shelter and half mad with heat and thirst— when they’d realized that they’d succeeded. Barely, but succeeded; nobody had set foot inside the vault. But as time passed, one by one, they craved the familiarity, craved a quiet place without a constant crush of bodies, of voices and unknowns. The brush of men past their arms—although innocent in most instances—was a heavy, UGLY reminder.

 

They’d remade the vault, over the course of about sixteen days. Stripped out any reminder of Joe and filled the space with things that were truly and wholly theirs.

 

The Dag grew medicinal herbs under the dome, sheltered because some were too fragile for the unpredictable desert winds. Capable had formed a library of the upper level, Cheedo had found paints, with the help of garage boys, and constructed a mural along the tall curving walls, Toast had claimed the far corner, beside the herb garden and filled it with tools and plans, set about relearning weaponry and studying the engineering of devices to help make life a little less painful, and their home easier to defend.

 

Angharad’s painted words remained, a constant reminder and memorial, and that was fine. They would not have this if it hadn’t been for her. They would not have the freedom to fight for themselves and make their world better. They do not sleep there, can’t, they’ve taken Furiosa’s old rooms as their own, sleep tangled together amid a mound of cushions and moonlight with the Vuvalini women across the hall.

 

None of them, however, step foot into the vault once Max has been carried inside. For a moment Furiosa thinks they feel that their private space has been violated. Only a handful of men and boys have been inside the vault in more than seven-hundred days. But then she realizes it’s not because he is a man, it’s because they’re aware of how sick he is. How weak and vulnerable. They linger outside not from fear, or pity, but out of protectiveness. Warning away any visitor and wide eyed boy who happens too close.

 

The only one they allow the privilege of sharing their watch is a lad named Spaz. He’d been laid up at the time of the Run, had been thrown from his lancer’s perch while training the week before and broken his leg in three places. The Organic Mechanic had claimed he’d lose it.

 

Spazz’d been furious at first, thinking that the Citadel would fall to ruin without the Immortan, that the women would be pushovers and let everyone be killed in a raid. As he had been raised to believe women were weak of mind and body and craved the rule of a man.

 

He’d been wrong. Had fought alongside them when the Buzzards and Rock Riders came on the heels of the shattered War Party. Saw the rage and determination in the faces of the Sisters and Milk Mothers and Wretched. Saw fire and the pride to be able to defend themselves.

 

They fought _dirty._

 

He’d been impressed.

 

After his leg had healed he walked with a limp, but had taken a shine to Toast. Had been one of the first to accept the green paint and the new way. Had been one of the many to defend the Sisters when Pups and Boys had shouted and cried defection. Fearful that the women were trying to snuff out everything that they’d known. He’d been one of the multitude to quell the rebellion, and though some of the boys practiced the old ways still, seeking the Historic, they understood now that it was their own choice. Death was not required of them to have meaning and purpose.

 

Spaz followed the stretcher up to the vault, having lingered outside the Wards waiting.  He was alabaster pale beneath his clay and green paint, with white blonde hair. Had seen The Fool hunched over the wheel of his truck, the fever bright in his eyes, the confusion. Had watched Toast take over driving when the man had lost consciousness. He knew the worry and determination in her eyes. Knew this man was important somehow, he MATTERED to Toast and the other Sisters. Spaz wanted to know how.

 

He sat vigil outside the vault doors. Propped against Toast’s leg where she’d taken residence on an overturned bucket, sharpening the claws on her bracers for wont of something productive to do. He slid the other glove on and sharpened those for her so they would be even.

 

For the last hour or so there had been gentle commotion inside the vault. Mari and Moira and Sorcha trying to coax the fool into clearing his lungs.

 

They hadn’t been able to manage it yet.

 

“It’s shock,” a voice. He couldn’t tell whose it was, knew only that it wasn’t Furiosa’s.

 

“He’s exhausted… Lost too much blood.”

 

“The fever took all his strength.”

 

“Maybe if we prop him up some more. Try some menthol.”

 

“Is there anything you can do about the pain?” That was Furiosa, her voice distinct, controlled.

 

“I don’t think we have anything.”

 

“He’s in PAIN. He’s not going to cough at all when it feels like any movement is going to turn his insides out!”

 

It goes quiet for a while, comforting murmurs and the movement of bodies around the space.

 

Spaz finishes sharpening Toast’s claws and hands them back. He tilts his head against her knee and speaks softly; “I think I can help him… There’s a Lady, down the shredders workshop, makes smokes.”

 

“Smokes?”

 

The others turn to him with curious expressions, watch as he pinches his thumb and forefinger to his lips; “Smokes.”

 

He rocks his head forward, “Some of the older boys—the War Boys with lumps—They get ‘em. Helps the pain, lets ‘em eat. Organic didn’t like ‘em, said it made us soft… I tried it once,” He rolled his lips up, “Euch— smelled like ass, but I’d never slept so shine—Driver I knew before, Zade, had lumps real bad, made all his teeth rot out—couldn’t eat or do nothin’ unless he’d had a smoke. Made him real soft, but he’d laugh and drive like mad after.”

 

Capable meets Toast’s eyes and shrugs a shoulder toward her ear; “Couldn’t hurt to try it.”

 

Spaz nods and pushes to his feet, limps off at a quick pace. He’s gone almost an hour.

 

In that time the noise from the vault has intensified and Xana has come up from the shops to sit with her kin in vigil.

 

“He can’t breathe,” Moira’s voice is tense.

 

“Come on, boy. You’ve got to do it—“

 

“Could he be bleeding inside?” Xana has a low soft voice, sweet like the Ploppers* that grow on the larger butte.

 

“No, we checked before he was closed… It’s the fever and shock—If we can’t figure something out—“

 

And Max’s voice rose, not for the first time, wordless urgency, thin and brittle—

 

Cheedo remembers once, before she’d been moved to the Citadel, seeing a dog. Gray and naught but skin stretched over bones. It had screamed and screamed while the village healer woman had tried to soothe it, careful pats and strokes.

 

The dog had only ever known agony in its lifetime, had only ever known people to be brutal and unkind. It didn’t understand and so had reacted the only way it knew how to process touch.

 

Looking back on it Cheedo had heard that sound so many times, not always from screams, but in eyes, in sobs, in the hearts of her sisters and her own.

 

Pain and fear and hopelessness.

 

She covered her ears and ducked under Dag’s arm with her teeth grit; “Why won’t he stop!” The words were only a breath but Dag heard, seemed to hear everything, and pulled the girl closer to her, tried to ignore the wet slide down her cheeks.

 

Spaz appeared at the end of the corridor waving a tin cup over his head.

 

Toast almost came to her feet, turned and called into the Vault; “Mari!”

 

The woman appeared, bristled, hair pulled back under a length of fabric.

 

Spaz was panting, beads of sweat on his brow. He held up the cup. “Banka said this’d help… with the pain.”

 

Mari eyed him distrustfully and peered into the cup when he gave it over. Her brows pulled together and she prodded the contents. Eight or nine thumb print sized knots of green. They stuck to her fingertip and she had to scrape the digit against the edge of the cup to remove them. Her eyes slid up to Spaz and something twinkled in them.

 

“Where the shit did you find this?”

 

Spaz was bent over his knees breathing hard; “Banka and Shift… They work in the shedder shop… grow it down by the boilers,” He heaved a deep breath, “Is that enough? I can get more.”

 

“Mari,” Moira poked her head through the curtain; “What is it?”

 

Mari made a sound in her throat, half a laugh and held up the cup; “Choof!”

 

Moira shook her head, confused but Mari was already heading toward her.

 

“We’ll get him coughing,” She chuckled.

 

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They’d propped him up, Furiosa sitting at his side with her right hand on his arm.

 

He was growing weaker by the moment, every breath rattled and crackled in his chest, and every minute the fluid stayed in there the less air he was getting, the weaker he became.

 

Xana was sitting by the door humming and twirling bits of colored thread together into a wide band, puffing on a twisted metal pipe. Mari snatched it from between her lips as she passed and bore the brunt of her elder’s threat;

 

“Steady now—What was that for!” Xana reached for it with her brows drawn down. “You can’t just take my gun like that!”

 

Mari shoved the tin cup under her nose long enough for the older woman to get a whiff of its contents.

 

“Sweet earth!” Her watery blue eyes widened and her hand curled like a crow’s talon. “You give that here!”

 

Mari hissed and plucked one of the green curls out of the cup, began to tear at it with her blunt nails, stuffing the frayed bits down into the mouth of the pipe. “Got to get him coughing. Won’t make it till’ morning if we don’t.”

 

Furiosa was watching them with her brows drawn down, “What is it?”

 

“It’s good—Medicine,” Xana said, “Thought it was extinct!”

 

Furiosa snatches the cup away and scowls at the contents; “Fool’s Weed—“

 

“Mind your tongue!” Xana visibly balks; “You watch—Just watch!”

 

Furiosa was opening her mouth to object but Max’s hand flexed against the cushion on his side again, rattling breath hitching.

 

Mari has shredded one knot of herb and has the tip of her tongue poked out between her lips as she tries to peel the sticky bits off her fingers and poke it into the pipe; “It’s good—Fresh, look!” She shoves her sticky fingers under Sorcha’s nose and the woman bats her hand away.

 

“I’ve never and I won’t,” She shook her head, dusted four fingers down her chin and flicked them in Mari’s direction with her nose wrinkled up.

 

“Oh! That’s how it is,” Mari said and shimmied her shoulders in Sorcha’s direction, “Well if you think it’s below you, you can go back to your bits.”

 

Sorcha rolled her eyes and climbed to her feet, dusted herself off and made for the door.

 

Xana came to her feet when Mari nodded to her, takes the pipe when it’s offered and goes up to her toes to press the tender to the flame of the oil lamp mounted on the wall. She breathes deeply and holds it, rocks back and coughs, hiccups and coughs again. Her voice comes out in a whine, eyes watering; “Oh, that’s lovely!”

 

The smoke is thick and sickeningly sweet, burns in Furiosa’s sinuses and makes her eyes water.

 

“Look out, girl,” Xana shuffles forward drawing deeply of the pipe and handing it to Mari as she bends herself over Max.

 

Xana catches his face between her hands and leans close as if she intends to press her mouth over his, but instead exhales slowly as he breathes in.

 

He reacts violently, shakes his head free with a grunt, left hand coming up to press against her chest and his breath stutters in—and comes out explosively.

 

It’s a strange noise, like an engine spluttering on fumes. Max’s eyes roll up and his breath rips back in again, arms rigid and clamping over his stomach.

 

Furiosa reaches for him, tries to keep his body from folding in on itself and ripping out the stitches barely holding his insides in. “Stop—That’s enough!”

 

Moira makes a low sound of concern and goes to him, helping add counter-pressure to his middle as he struggles to breathe and calm the spasms of his lungs. His eyes are watering and his teeth are chattering in distress, pain etched deeply into the lines of his face.

 

“Easy—easy, now. Let it out,” Mari chants from the far edge of the room, takes a small pull on the pipe herself. “It’s a natural reaction… It’ll lessen the pain—If he can get enough, it’ll help.”

 

Max shakes his head, chin pushed up, throat stretched long and pale as he struggles. “No—“ It comes out like a sob and he pushes Xana back, “No!”

 

Furiosa’s hand slides under his head, her body just MOVING into the space between him and Xana, teeth clamped and only barely withholding a snarl.

 

Xana exhales, smoke clouding around her and she wafts it away, steps back recognizing the panic on his face and the threat in Furiosa’s.

 

Mari moves forward with a sigh; “He’ll rip his stitches out, try to keep him still—“

 

“Max—Max!” Furiosa curls her fingers into the hair at his nape, bunches the blankets around her left to protect his skin from the metal and presses against his shoulder. “It’s OK! It’s OK.”

 

His eyes find hers and for a frightening moment there is nothing in them but pain and fear—then it slowly fades, becomes desperation and he bares his teeth, breathes around them in harsh shallow gasps, something almost shrill in his need to convey urgency; _“Fire!”_

 

She shakes her head, “No—No fire.”

 

He shudders, gasps and works his feet against the bed, cries out; “The green— _Hnn_ —can smell it b- _burning!”_

 

“You’re dreaming, it’s just this—in Xanny’s pipe,” She holds up the cup and lets him peer inside. “You have to stop moving or you’ll pull your stitches out.”

 

His eyes find hers again and with what seems like great effort he wills his body to go still. Lies there shivering and tense but breathing a little easier.

 

Furiosa takes a deep breath and shakes her head to clear it, the smoke is almost worse than the ether. “Mari says this will help with the pain.”

 

He shakes his head. “’s illegal—“ His body tries to cough again and his eyes roll dizzily, body in brief spasm.

 

“Illegal!” Xana says with a snort; “Says who?”

 

Max seems to shake himself, blinks rapidly and remembers where he is, what’s happened. He goes very still, shivering and doesn’t speak for a long time.

 

“Max?” Furiosa leans over him, presses her brow to his, can hear the rattle of fluid in his lungs. “I don’t know what Illegal is. But I know this got you coughing when nothing else would… She says it helps with pain. It’s the only thing we’ve got… If you can’t clear your lungs—“ She lets the thought go unspoken, but it weighs heavily on the room just the same. “I don’t want to see you shredded… Not when we have the chance to save you.”

 

He doesn’t move, but a dozen or so heartbeats later he makes a whimpering noise and turns his head toward her.

 

Xana and Mari shift closer to him, huddled together at the edge of the bed, they take turns puffing smoke at him and he lays there still and resigned, pale as a corpse. After a moment he forces himself to breathe in deliberately and it starts; a harsh rattle and his arms twitch helplessly across his stomach.

 

Moira nudges Furiosa back when she moves to pull them away. She steps forward around her sister’s shoulder and wipes at the wetness on Max’s lips, swiping it away with every expulsion.

 

His head shakes, his arms shake—fingers stretched and pleading. He feels like he’s split in two, like a corpse taken over by the wheels, mashed and scattered from the core. The old women around him have fire in their eyes—breathe bitter herbal smoke into his face—blind him. He remembers the Dragon from the dunes, wonders if these women were its master, or its mates. Feels a cool burning in his sinuses and a fuzziness in his head—

 

Ether—The sudden slide from awareness to BLACK. Knowing he's fading and unable to stop it.

 

He sees Furiosa behind a curtain of smoke. Her eyes are wide and shining—wet—her shoulders shaking, mouth compressed. She has a residual smear of green across her brow and flecks of black in the fine lines around her eyes. Her teeth appear like a wall in her mouth and he squeezes his eyes shut before she starts breathing fire— Arms under him, pushing him up, a hot ripping feeling across his stomach and pressure as someone mashes down on the wound.

 

Furiosa doesn’t know what’s worse, the tears leaking down his face or the noises he makes between coughs. Like he’s being ripped apart—It likely feels as if he is. She remembers how she had hated every one of these women in the days after the Run, always badgering her to breathe deeply, to cough, to drink this or rub this on her throat. She came to despise the scent of that sticky grey salve Mari had in a little tin in her bags. It made her eyes water worse than the scent of Fool’s Weed. She wonders if it would have helped Max at all, as it had helped clear her own lungs, but she doesn’t dare get close, not yet—not until his hand spasms empty and reaching in her direction and then not even a war party could have stopped her.

 

She told herself it was a debt. She owed him for saving her life, but all she could think about was that lingering tingle of his lips against her wrist in the cutting room. The desperate look in his eyes, a wordless plea—

_Make it stop._

 

She may as well have shoved Moira away and planted herself by his head. Shoved her right arm beneath his chest and drew his head to rest against the crook of her shoulder.

 

His skin was still hot—feverish. An unstable, brittle high she knew came before a crisis.

 

But, the smoke did its job. His lungs were clear.

 

Mari peeled the blankets away from him and untied the cloth from his waist, peered beneath at his stitches and layered more bandages over the soiled ones, tied them down again and drew the blankets up, bent close to listen to his breathing. “No tearing… A couple more and he should be clear.”

 

Furiosa could already hear the difference. Too quick, yes, still shallow— but no more crackling.

 

Max lay shivering against her, fighting for air, barely conscious.

 

Xana and Moira flittered away unnoticed sometime later, but Mari remained, sat in the corner with one of the vault’s books and chewed the ends of her hair.

 

Furiosa sat there for a long time, until the vague fuzziness in her head faded and her back hurt too badly for her to remain upright in such a twisted position. She didn’t move far, collected one of the cushions from the corner where Moira had been sitting and shifted onto the bed, pried Max’s head and shoulders up enough to slide her thigh beneath, lying across the width of the bed with her mechanical arm against the wall and her living one on his chest, thumb brushing the prickly flesh of his jaw and throat. Counting the taptaptap of his pulse on the pads of her fingers.

 

She dozed, must have, came awake not long later—it was lighter beyond the ruddy brown of the curtain and Mari was mopping Max’s face with a cloth. She looked up and met Furiosa’s eyes evenly, nodded once and spoke in a whisper; “Just the fever spiking, go back to sleep.”

 

She couldn’t, not right away, hovered her hand over the cushion shielding his wound and finds his fingers curled protectively into the fabric, fits her own between them.

 

He’s unconscious for most of the day. She doesn’t want to call it sleep because it’s too deep, too complete. He barely moves, coughs weakly when Xana brings the pipe in again, but the tension in his face fades when she’s gone. The herb works, what little of it he tolerates. He wakes just enough to thrash his head and say ‘NO.’ in a rasp of a voice when she gets too close, or the smoke too thick.

 

“Stubborn fool,” Xana snorts and doesn’t bother relighting, just leaves the pipe sitting there on the desk and storms out.

 

His eyes stay open to slits for a while, body shivering, breath too shallow. Mari isn’t pleased, keeps giving her urgent, worried looks. “His fever should have broken by now… I don’t know if its stress or if some of the infection leaked out.”

 

“He needs water.”

 

“And if somethin’s wrong—if we didn’t get everything closed off just right inside the water’ll kill him… We have to wait.”

 

“He’s dehydrated enough as it is—“

 

“The dehydration’s probably the only reason he made it through the cutting! Not enough water, the blood clots quick.”

 

She’s angry. Angry at Mari, angry at herself, angry that Max got sick and came to them. Why couldn’t he have just driven off into the salt? She never would have known—could have lived out the rest of her life thinking he was out there somewhere searching for his redemption. She wouldn’t have to watch him die— She wants to shout and rave, but knows these instincts are dead. Were learned under Joe whose only power had been his cruelty and his cunning.

 

I’m different… I’m not him. So she stays her tongue, breathes in, forces the words to calm; “If the infection did leak out what more harm will water do?”

 

“And if it didn’t—if it’s stress?”

 

Furiosa’s eyes flick to the pipe on the table, then back to Max’s face. The tension between his brow and in the fall of lashes on his pale cheeks. She swallows past a tight feeling in her throat; “Give me that.”

 

Mari hesitates but does as she’s asked.

 

Furiosa shifts, lifts herself to bend Bodily over Max’s head, “Look at me,” His brows twitch but his eyes don’t open. “MAX.”

 

One eye cracks open, dull and glassy with pain. He says nothing.

 

She says nothing, stares back at him with her jaw set. Commanding. The smoke tastes about the way it smells. Green and soursweet and cloying. Chills as it burns in her lungs and she coughs it out herself before she can do any good, snarls at her own weakness and inhales again, catches Max’s chin before he can turn away and presses her lips awkwardly over his own, squeezes with her blunt hard nails until he whines and relents, eyes squeezed closed in resignation.

 

It feels weird and she isn’t sure she likes it, feels him breathing in the air from her lungs. She jerks back and wipes her mouth on her wrist, hears Mari coaching him—

 

“Hold it in if you can—good. That’s good, now out,” There is finally relief in her voice, "Alright, take a moment and we'll go again."

 

Furiosa is relieved she doesn’t have to do it again, leaves Mari with the pipe and flees, rubbing her fingertips around her lips because they tingle and she isn’t sure if it’s from the Fool’s Weed or the Fool.

 

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	5. The Kindness of Strangers

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**FIVE**

 

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Furiosa stands outside the vault for a few minutes, hand on her brow. She stares at the little shoots of green in the hydroponics beds, hears the chains clinking as they rotate up toward the rising sun. Feels something warm rising in her chest.

 

Two days. Max has been here two days.

 

When she turns Furiosa notices Toast is sitting there on an overturned bucket with Cheedo seated in front of her. She’s braiding small colored bone and clay beads into her hair.

 

“Your eyes look funny,” Cheedo says squinting; “You’ve been sitting in there with that smoke too long.”

 

Furiosa finds one of the blue beads with swirls cut into its surface infinitely fascinating and strides smoothly over to look. “Where are the others?” In that moment she isn’t sure if she means the sisters or the other blue beads… She wants one.

 

“Food,” Toast says as-matter-of-factly. “Spaz is bringing up ours,” She’s focused on her fingers, twirling strands of hair together. She picks a longer bead this time. Intricate, twisting cylinder shaped with tiny metal dots pushed into its shaft. Slides it up the braid and uses a bit of string dipped in sap glue to hold the braid together. The sap will dry and flake off in about a week and Cheedo will be back for rebraiding.

 

“You should sleep,” Toast says, glancing up; “You’ve been in there the whole time and I haven’t seen you or Mari rest at all.”

 

“He’s very fragile right now—“

 

“I’ll sit with him,” Toast pats Cheedo’s head, alerting her sister that the adornments are complete.

 

Cheedo rolls to her feet and brushes the light dust from the seat of her brown trousers. Uses a colorful band Xana had made her to tie her hair back at the nape of her neck. “We can both sit with him until you’ve had a rest.”

 

Furiosa knows there’s an argument against it, can feel it on the tip of her tongue like a stone in one of the pears grown up top. But she can’t find a reason, or the words to voice it. Her mind feels soft and pliant, like the length of Cheedo’s hair, or one of the colorful tufts of fibers braided into Toast’s. She hums in acknowledgement and makes her way to the end of the hall, up the winding dark stairs toward the gardens.

 

It’s been almost seven-hundred days since the run. She knows this, feels it in her bones, but it still seems fresh. Still raises her hackles to see boys painted with death faces on the green. But there is hope now. It’s tangible. She can reach out and touch it.

 

The gardens always smell a little like dark rot, but they also smell ALIVE in a way very little in the wasteland does. A crisp BRILLIANT smell. Furiosa wanders across the lowest tiers, runs her fingers over the blocks of stone that help form each level, the tiny plants growing in cracks and on ledges. Their names painted in chalk at their sides.

 

The Ploppers are ripening, red and fat hanging from their tiny shoots in the niches of the walls. Others are still stunted and green, but will continue to grow. There are Boys on the path ahead of her and she stays back wary at first, an instinct, but they turn pale faces up at her and smile and she can see the green dots on their brows and along their collarbones.

 

The Dag’s boys. There are six of them, barely two-thousand days old. They’re wearing aprons stitched with a deep pocket on the front, carefully plucking the ripe fruit.

 

These are treasures, Furiosa knows. An experiment Dag had conducted with some of the Keeper’s seeds. Furiosa remembers the girl staring at the jar, the tiny little pips stuffed in.

 

_“What are they?”_

_“I don’t know,” Dunny had said and referred to Sorcha; “What do you think?”_

_Sorcha had shrugged. “I dunno, I just remember they were small plants, sweet… The earth started going too sour for them when I was still a baby. They were stunted things when I was small, stopped growing after that.”_

_“Just plop a few seeds in where you can and we’ll find out!” Dunny had said nodding. “If anything’s got a chance of growing it’d be here!”_  

 

_Dag had found a ledge in the wall and prodded a few seeds in with the tip of her finger then resealed the jar; “No wasting,” And she’d scrawled on a bit of cloth she tied to the vial, “Ploppers.”_

_It about two moon cycles the plant had pushed its head out again. Three pronged leaves with jagged edges. Soft and plush to the touch. Not long after a little shoot had appeared, and a couple tiny white flowers with yellow centers._

_Dag had cared for them herself with a bundle of threads, not trusting the bees kept in grand white boxes on the topmost tiers to travel down this far. Brushing pollen across the petals when she could, cooing and talking to them—Had named the plants that emerged Dart and Whip and Bolt._

_Then the flowers turned brown and tiny green nubs appeared, grew fatter and fatter with dimples of seeds on their skins, soaked up water and expanded exponentially._

_Dag’s belly had begun to fill out when the first fruits turned red. Skin taut and shining if a bit weathered from the occasional storm. One had fallen off into her hands, as wide as two fingers and shaped like a little bulb. She’d appeared down in their room with it in the protective cup of her hands, staring curiously. “Dart’s baby!” She said reverently._

_Mari had stared at it with wide misty eyes; “Lookit that,” A cautionary hand went out. “I remember those things… Gotta be careful, you can be ‘lergic. If you’re ‘lergic it can kill ya.”_

_Dag’s mouth had thinned and she’d nodded, sat for a while with a blade, carefully plucking away the tiny seeds and putting them into a jar to dry. Her fingers were stained with little drops of red and curiously she popped one between her lips._

_Capable crowded close; “Are you bleeding?”_

_Dag’s eyes were wide, finger still in her mouth._

_“Are you ‘lergic?” Capable turned to stare at Mari; “Is she ‘lergic?”_

_Dag drew her finger out with a pop. Then started licking at the tips of her others._

_They cut the tiny fruit into pieces licking and then holding the sliver for a long while to make sure there were no ‘lergics among them._

_Dag was squirming, eyes still wide._

_Mari peered into each of their mouths and asked if they had any itching, or burning. None._

_Dag slurped her slice down and her eyes fluttered shut. The fruit was supple and warm and SWEET. She practically moaned._

_Cheedo presented her sliver, “You have it,” She and Dag went right back up to the garden and prodded more seeds into every crack they could find along the second tier wall and by the time Dag’s belly was heavy and Mari had told her there were likely two lives within her instead of just one, the Ploppers were exploding. Some almost the size of a baby’s fist._

_“If you cook them down,” Sorcha had said, “And can them they turn into a sticky sauce,” She’d presented a jar and a tray of flat bread, or if you cook them and spread them out to dry it turns thick and leathery,” She presented that too, sheets of it cut into palm sized squares. “All very sweet.”_

_“And the seeds?”_

_“It’s difficult to get them all off, but we’ve managed.” There’s nearly a pint of them._

Only a few people had been found who were ‘lergic. A handful of milk mothers and pups sported sore throats and a blister or two on their tongues, but Mari’s caution had been worth it.

 

Furiosa approached the boys slowly and plucked down one of the Ploppers, carried it with her up the winding paths, past the windmills and beneath the fruit bearing trees shading rings of spinach and kale and cabbages. Brushed past the buckets hanging on tall metal staves sporting inverted tomato plants with fruit larger than her fist and tufts of basil or chard growing from the tops. The upmost tier was a wide long field of maize with beans and squash planted at their bases. Dag was there with six more of her boys plucking beans and stuffing their apron pouches.

 

“Mother—“ One of the boys turned and called over his shoulder.

 

Dag lifted her head and followed the boy’s gaze to Furiosa. Her brows pulled together, she lifted an earth stained hand and shielded her eyes; “The Fool still alive?”

 

Furiosa nodded.

 

“You look awful,” Dag sidestepped the boys and approached, a tiny pale body following in her wake.

 

Furiosa looked down at the child with the same kind of wonder she’d held for the blue bead in Cheedo’s hair.

 

Dag peered down as well, appraisingly; “What do we say, Bean?”

 

“’lo, Lady,” Bean hid his face in Dag’s trouser leg. He lifted a tiny fist from his chest and spread his fingers in greeting.

 

“Where’s the other one?” Furiosa lifted her eyes to Dag’s face.

 

“She’s with Tiz, they’re digging tubers,” Dag cocked her head to the side; “Your eyes look funny, too much Fool’s Weed?”

 

Furiosa nodded and held out the plopper.

 

Dag hummed and took it, handed it back and pitched her chin toward the path, “Go sit down somewhere and don’t get in the way. The air’ll do you some good. Bean?”

 

“Mama?” The boy looked up, chin resting on Dag’s thigh, short arms around her knee.

 

“Will you take care of Lady Furiosa for me? Make sure she takes a nap?”

 

“Yeah,” He rubbed his face on her trousers tiredly, shuffled forward, caught a strap on Furiosa’s pants leg and pulled, “C’mon. I show you my t’ings.”

 

The boy was small, limbs not quite proportional, but to look at him he was all Dag. Her white hair, her eyes, the same little space between his teeth. The only hint that he had anything to do with Joe was his nose, and Dag had no problem with that, seeing as Joe’s had rotted off long before Dag had come along. She thought her twins were perfect. They would grow up free and loved, and if she could help it, never knowing of the violence they’d sprouted from.

 

Bean led Furiosa to a stout apple tree, his energy suddenly rocketing. He giggled and pulled until she feared the strap on her trousers would come free, but once under the tree’s boughs Bean let go and scrambled up the tree’s trunk, crawling along a limb until he could reach one of the fruits. Plucked it down and shoved it into the pocket on the front of his apron. He came down again and sat in the grass with a sigh. He held the apple above his head, eyes closed and seemed to bow to the tree, voice careful and appreciative; “T’ank. You.”

 

Furiosa dropped to sit beside him, cut the apple into pieces and watched him crunch, took a piece when he shook it at her insistently and watched him stick the seeds into a pocket on his apron’s chest. She laid back on the earth and stared up at the glow of the leaves in the sunlight, felt at peace even when Bean laid back with his head on her stomach still crunching his snack. He sighed contentedly and threaded his fingers through the grass, hummed a high childish tune;

 

“Good tree. Happy tree,” Then yawned. “Leefs leefs leefs.”

 

The sunlight blinked and sparked like prism shards through the leaves and Furiosa lifted her left arm just to see the light shine through the gaps. It was almost as if she could feel it in the iron of her fingers.

 

Bean lifted his short arms and waved his plump fingers. “Lady?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You nap?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I take care of you,” He rolled to his feet and shuffled up, laid down with his head resting on her outstretched right arm. “Leefs are p’rty,” He said conversationally. “Mama says I can has a green leef here,” He touched his brow, under a white curl; “When I’m ol’ nuff.”

 

Furiosa’s brows lifted, she could feel the air tickling through the hair of her brows. Sparking along each nerve. Closed her eyes and could feel the shadows of each leaf on her skin.

 

“Sleep sweet, Lady.”

 

“Sleep sweet, Bean,” She exhaled, breathed deep and caught the smell of the earth, the fertilizer, the growing green of the place, the soft clean smell of Bean’s hair and skin where he shuffled and curled up against her ribs.

 

0-0-0

 

“Furiosa.”

 

She was awake instantly… but—nah. Oh, she felt so relaxed! Not a single ache or twinge or discomfort—why should she get up? Nothing could be that important.

 

“Furiosa, it’s Max.”

 

She pried one eye open and peered up blinking stupidly at Dag. “Max?” Then the lethargy, and sweet bonelessness was gone and she lunged upright. “Max.”

 

The sun has sunk down—not much, no more than an hour, possibly two, but it would be dark soon.

 

Dag put a hand on her shoulder; “Slow down—it’s fine. Listen,” She waited until Furiosa turned to her and her gaze was alert once more. “His fever broke, Mari said she’s going to go rest but someone needs to sit with him incase he wakes and can’t remember where he is.”

 

Furiosa scrubbed her wrist over her eyes, they felt gummy and there was a hollow ache in her stomach. She nodded, then did it again because she needed to remind herself. Oh her head felt funny. She shook it and nodded a third time, then pushed to her feet.

 

“Here,” Dag pushed a plump crusty roll into her hand. It was coarse, made primarily of oats and had red bits in it. “Eat as you walk,” She flattened her hands on Furiosa’s back and gave her a little shove toward the path, then bent and scooped up her still sleeping son. The boy clung to her neck and yawned, sleepily patted at a leaf and went limp with sleep again.

 

She ate, but barely tasted anything. Her mouth was dry and the bun, though filled with pear and plopper and apple, was almost too much to swallow without water. She made it to the stairs and had to stop and cup water from the spigot to her lips, two-three-four handfuls before it felt even the slightest bit better.

 

The trek back down to the vault was dizzying, the darkness of the hallways such a contrast to the evening sun outside. It was disorientating and she had to stop more than once and remind herself she was going in the right direction.

 

Spaz was back, free of most of his paint. Capable was with him, sitting on the overturned bucket with some tangle of metal and leather straps across her knee, gently dripping oil into its hinges and working them back and forth.

 

“Where are Toast and Cheedo?”

 

“Mari sent them out. He was upset when his fever started to crack and she didn’t want them to get hurt if he took a swing.”

 

Furiosa was scandalized for an instant that Mari thought the girls would think a mindless swing from a man too sick to know what he was doing was in any way worse than what they had endured under Joe. But she understood, just because it wasn’t worse, didn’t mean it wasn’t bad, and she’d seen Mari incapacitate a man with three fingers once—Just pinched his wrist and he’d gone down shrieking.

 

Sorcha was waiting inside the vault holding a mug of something steaming and a bent spoon. She tilted her head in greeting when Furiosa stepped inside; “She’s got the pipe on him, give it a few minutes… Wants to keep the pain down so he’ll sleep.”

 

Furiosa stands there silently, works her tongue around the inside of her mouth. Her stomach makes a rude grumbling noise.

 

Sorcha snorts in amusement; “There’s still supper down in the Hall. I can send the boy after it.”

 

“No, I’m—“

 

“I don’t mind,” Spaz says eagerly, pushes his lank hair off his brow. “They had bean stew, greens, and a honey bread, or corn and potato with greens and a bun—Mine had plopper sauce,” He seems pleased.

 

Furiosa nodded in the boy’s direction. Watched him scurry off.

 

There were a few muted coughing noises and a grunt—She feared it ramping up into a cry of pain, but Mari’s voice rose instead;

 

“There, not so bad now, is it?” Mari snorted; “Ah, still not one for words. That’s alright… One more? No? Right… I know you don’t like it, but it helps, you can’t deny it. When it starts hurting again don’t just sit there like a lump, got it?”

 

Mari threw back the curtain and came out wafting smoke behind her, she let the curtain flap shut and grinned broadly when she saw Furiosa standing there; “And she’s back!” The woman looked exhausted, ambled up and prodded Furiosa in the stomach. “Your turn to sit with him while I doze off with a head in my lap.”

 

Capable snorted from the doorway.

 

Mari turned to Sorcha and appraised what was in the mug; “Ah, no pieces?”

 

“No pieces.”

 

“Good,” She swatted Furiosa with the back of her hand; “He can have this, only after he’s had water—NOT MUCH! Don’t want him throwing up. This took a lot out of him, but I think he’ll pull through… Just have to watch that wound now and wait for things to start moving again,” She stifled a yawn into her fist and shook her head. “Dunny still up top?”

 

“I think so—“

 

“Good, always did like a good romp under the trees,” And she ambled off.

 

Capable’s face was pink and she was scrubbing the contraption over her thigh with renewed vigor.

 

Furiosa barely noticed, she was already moving toward the curtain. She eased it open and peered in before she entered. The smoke hung in the air, not as heavy as it had been earlier thankfully. All she could see of Max was the side of his face. Tilted away from her, the tips of his fingers on top of the cushion on his side, and the shape of him beneath the blankets.

 

His breathing had improved, slower, deeper.

 

“Max?”

 

He didn’t stir.

 

It was a strange feeling, like she was invading someone’s private space, but she slipped into the room anyway and stepped up to the bed, gazed down at him curiously.

 

He was still incredibly pale, but the sweat on his brow was old, his hair already drying, and the scrunch of pain that had marred his forehead and around his mouth was all but erased.

 

Sorcha shuffled things on the desk, sat down the mug and spoon and settled the pipe beside the cup with the remaining bits of Fool’s Weed. “You’ll have to feed him—the smell of this weed is awful!” Sorcha waved a hand in front of her nose and fled.

 

Furiosa hadn’t ever LIKED the smell of it. She’d always associated it with War Boys sitting in circles with a blanket tucked over their heads, giggling—Stupid mistakes and blank stares.

 

Now… Now she couldn’t help but think of the noises Max had made, and those moments of ease when they’d managed to get him to breathe enough in to help. The taste of it in her lungs and the back of her throat—how it had made all her aches and irritations fade and colors burst in the sunlight through the leaves.

 

The rough press of his mouth against her own—the vibration of a whimper as his lips finally parted—the pull as he’d breathed in from her lungs—A hot slide of tension in her chest. Relief that he was getting what he needed, fear of the unknown potential of this intimacy.

 

She could smell it, and she saw how at ease Max was now. How soft and pain free his face, breathing, and posture were. It made her throat feel tight. She settled on the chair by the bed and propped her feet up by his knees, settled her left arm across her lap to ease the tension growing in her back, and the weight of it off her shoulder.

 

For a while she plucked at it, flipped the lines and wires in its core and turned it this way and that to make the fingers react. It was bulkier than the one destroyed when she’d killed Joe, only three ‘fingers’ instead of four. She’d been working with Toast of late, to build a better one. But it was slow going, the parts they would need few and hard to come by. With a sigh she pulled at the straps around her waist and shucked it from her body, settled it onto the desk and rubbed grit and tenderness from the end of her stump. Everything was still for a handful of breaths.

 

“Furiosa?” Capable’s voice was quiet, but it carried. “Spaz has food for you, I’m going to bring it in, alright?”

 

The girl’s shoes scuffed deliberately against the floor, up the two steps and she nudged the curtain aside with her elbow, eyes finding Furiosa first, but flicking inexorably to Max. She paused, as if struck, mouth falling open, then with a tiny shake of her head turned back to the other woman and smiled. She handed over the bowl and set a plate with greens, dried slivers of tomato and the honey bread near Furiosa’s elbow.

 

The stew smelled rich, beans seasoned with onion and sliced peppers. She started shoving the beans into her mouth spoonful by spoonful, flavor exploding on her tongue, that peculiar, urgent hunger finally finding relief.

 

Capable stood there for a moment, looking at Max with her head cocked to the side; “Do you think he’ll make it? He’s so pale…”

 

“I think he will. As long as the wound heals without infection. I don’t see why he shouldn’t.”

 

“But they cut him open.”

 

“Can we not talk about this when I’m eating?”

 

Capable apparently didn’t hear; “I heard one of Mari’s boys talking, said she’d pulled out part of his insides…”

 

“I’m eating—“

 

“You don’t live after you’ve had some of your insides outside.”

 

“Capable?”

 

“Hmm?” She turned, had her lower lip sucked into her mouth anxiously, brows pinched together.

 

“He’s alive… He’s still sick, but he’s alive and his fever broke. Mari knew what she was doing.”

 

The girl turns back, just stares at Max for a long time, like he’s some feature, or something to be studied like the books she’s been devouring.

 

“If you don’t believe me, touch him,” Furiosa scrapes the bottom of her bowl clean and uses a finger to swipe away the last smears.

 

Capable seems to draw herself up in denial of it, but the curiosity is too much and she inches closer, skims her fingertips over his brow, the side of his head where the hair has grown longer since she’s last seen him. It’s not so long that Furiosa thinks he’s not touched it in seven-hundred days, but it’s long enough that Capable’s fingers disappear into it, still damp and dirty and an unidentifiable ash color. She thinks, if perhaps she can get him to wash, once he’s able to, that it might be a dark blonde color, or brown as her own. She can’t tell in the thin light from the lamp.

 

And as she watches a strange thing happens.

 

Max grunts and turns his head into the contact of Capable’s hand, brows bunched up. He’s not awake, Furiosa is confident of that, or else he would have likely reacted much differently, but he’s aware of the touch on some level—and wants more of it.

 

“Ooh,” Capable draws her fingers back and rubs them together, her nose wrinkled up, “He’s sticky.”

 

Furiosa snorts around her greens; “His fever just broke… He’s probably disgusting right now,” She prods the honey bread and eats that too, swipes her moistened fingertips against the plate to clean away any trace of edibles. “Pretty much the only part of him cleaned was where Mari was cutting,” She turns to the water pitcher in the corner and pours out a cup, drinks it and feels her brows pulling down, realization settling in like a stone in her gut; “He’ll need to be cleaned.”

 

Capable hums then looks up, “He’s too sick to clean himself?”

 

Furiosa nodded, remembered the harsh sound of his pain when he’d so much as breathed too deeply. How his hands had only twitched when they’d been urging him to press in on the wound when he coughed. She rubbed her brow tiredly and exhaled in a thunderous whoosh, looked to Capable with a resigned eye; “I’ll need soap and hot water, and a new cover for the bed, he’s probably sweated through that one.”

 

“Now?”

 

Now.

 

NOW?

 

“No.”

 

“No?”

 

Furiosa shook her head, “No, he needs to rest for a while before we put him through that. He’s been through enough for today.”

 

Capable nodded and moved away from the bed, collected the empty dishes and ran her finger around the chipped edges. “If you need help…”

 

Furiosa felt tension she didn’t know had been there ease in her shoulders and she nodded, saw the girl leave from the corner of her eye and settled back into the chair by the bed.

 

Max’s face was turned in her direction, smooth but for the prickles of hair on his cheeks, jaws and chin. Tilted up as if still looking for the source of the touch. His hands had moved, abandoned the cushion over his wound and were peeking over the edge of the blanket at his chest, as if frozen in the motion of reaching for something.

 

Furiosa stared at him long enough to find the position almost too much to bear after seeing him so ravaged by pain. It was a relief she felt to her bones. She shifted, leaned to the side and pushed her fingers into his hair, lifted the solid mass of his head enough to ease it back onto the pillow. Then again because, yes, he was dirty and a little sticky from old sweat, but he was alive, and for the moment resting and relatively free of pain.

 

His lips twitched, brows lifting and in the next instant one eye slid open, then the other and for the first time since she’d looked down off the edge of the lift and saw him moving away she finds his eyes and there is recognition in them.

 

He blinks slowly, tilts his head into her palm a little and runs the dry, tip of his tongue over the seam of his lips. He finds her face again and something steals over his expression, something keen and borderline hysteric.

 

His hands twitch, fingers finding the sides of his own face, prodding his sore cracked lips. Eyes flicking left and right as if suddenly he doesn’t know where he is.

 

“Max?” She speaks in a whisper, so as not to startle him. “Max, what’s wrong?”

 

He doesn’t answer, but his eyes widen, glassy from the potency of the smoke, pupils too large. He doesn’t speak, that would imply voice—No, his lips moved while he breathed and she could make out the shape of the words.

 

“Oh… It’s—it’s quiet,” His fingers twitch at his jaws, index and middle finger catch his left earlobe and pull on it, “It’s all quiet,” He makes a sound then, long and quavering, like a sigh or a moan and his eyes slide closed; “It’s quiet.”

 

“Max?”

 

He hums and it’s almost musical, presses a finger to his lips; “Shhh,” He touches his own face with half limp fingers, winds up with one hooked on his lip and his eyes open to slits, so bright she would think it was fever if she hadn’t had her hand on his head and could feel the lack of it. “Shhh,” He repeats, barely a whisper. “I’m hiding.”

 

“Hiding?” She lowers her voice to match him, curious and unsettled. “From who?”

 

“From the people,” He taps his fingertips against his cheekbones, “Maybe they’ve gone away.”

 

“What people, Max? There’s nobody here but me and you.”

 

He looks up at her again, face open and earnest in a way that makes her slightly uncomfortable. “Gone?” His voice has a bit of volume now.

 

“Gone.”

 

There’s a moment, brief, where his face crumples up and wetness shines in his eyes, then he tilts his face into her palm hard and he quivers, breathes in and out raggedly and Furiosa hopes this is just the trauma—just the stress from the days, from his illness, and the pain—hopes that he hasn’t been injured by the fever, as high as it had been. Hasn’t lost himself to dehydration—

 

Water.

 

Mari had said he could have water now!

 

“Are you thirsty?” It was a stupid question. Thirst was part of life, but at this moment something was different, soft and intimate between them and she felt she had to walk carefully or risk being bitten. Afraid what his reaction would be.

 

He nods, it’s a small gesture, but the whimper that comes out afterward is bigger. Louder, urgent.

 

Max is thirsty—He’s dry inside and out and Furiosa has water. Will GIVE him water. His hands twitch, pluck at her wrist and hold her in place simply by the pressure of his fingertips resting against the place he’d brushed so innocently with his lips before he’d gone under.

 

She pulls away and he whines at the loss of her, eyes falling closed, unable to keep them open.

 

She returns after a moment, hums and calls his name; “Max, I’ll have to prop you up again so you can drink… They sent something for you to eat too.”

 

He makes a sound and Furiosa would dare to think she’s only heard sounds like that come from the throats of the dying or wonton. Feels heat rise to her face and a clench go through her middle. She doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like the way he’s acting, all soft and wide-eyed. She scowls at the cup of Fool’s Weed and mutters as she moves things about, pulls the cushion she’d rested against earlier closer and slides her abbreviated arm under his shoulders, “Relax, don’t try to help.”

 

She didn’t think he would have helped even if he’d been completely coherent, but it was a relief when he nodded and remained limp as she hefted his head and shoulders enough to drag the cushion under him. Ground her teeth when he made a low grunting noise as the movement jostled his middle.

 

She hooked her hip on the edge of the bed and watched his face, the pinch of his brows, the slide of his right hand down to rest on the cushion on his belly. Press inward—

 

“Are you alright?”

 

His brows ticked up and back down and he was still for a time. His eyes cracked open and when he looked at her again some of the softness of his expression was gone. He wetted his lips again and his right hand twitched, lifted and struggled with the blanket draped over his chest.

 

Furiosa shook her head, “Just stay still,” She sighed and reached for the water cup. Her eyes were commanding, boring into his as she spoke firmly; “Slowly. Just a little bit at a time. Understand?”

 

His eyes flicked down and caught sight of the water in the cup, he grunted, as if agreeing and reached for it.

 

She settled the barrel of the cup in his fingers and watched—didn’t let go, which was fortunate, because his hand was shaking and the motion of his arm lifting was jerky and uncoordinated, weak from bloodloss. She sighed and shook her head, kept hold of the cup and steadied it against his lips, kept him from tilting it up and gulping it down like he had with the hose back in the desert.

 

She still remembered that after he’d swallowed and swallowed and swallowed—after he’d begrudgingly let them back into the rig his stomach had made ugly noises, boiling, burbling noises like the water and mother’s milk sloshing in the tanker. He’d gone pale and sweaty and swallowed frequently.

 

Furiosa was almost positive that him volunteering to go check the fuel pod was equal parts his fear of her finding a weapon back there, or the rig shutting down again, and his need to cough up some of the water he’d overfilled his belly with.

 

He whined at first when she forced the cup upright away from his mouth, but when he met her eyes he stilled, swiped his lower lip with the tip of his tongue and let his right hand fall to his chest.

 

She watched him, saw the tension building—could practically feel the thoughts building slowly in the haze of his mind.

 

Will she give it back?

 

Is she going to make me beg?

 

What if she doesn’t give it back?

 

Furiosa shook her head and tilted the cup back to his mouth, let him swallow two or three mouthfuls before she pulled it back again and brushed her knuckles against his chin to keep it from spilling down his chest and wetting the blankets or his bandages.

 

The third time his teeth caught the edge of the cup and he practically growled, dared her to take it away again and she felt something akin to relief.

 

“Hey, I’m not going to take it—you just have to go slowly so you don’t make yourself sick… Puking will hurt, so slow down.”

 

Her words seem to penetrate the fog and he seals his lips—still biting the cup to keep her from taking it— and he breathes quick and shallow through flared nostrils. Eyes on her like an animal waiting to be hit.

 

“I’m not going to take it from you,” She says softly, lowers her voice, tries to appeal to the awakening lizard part of his mind; “There’s more water, and there’s something for you to eat in that mug,” She tilts her head toward the desk, “But you have to slow down. I don’t want you actually puking your guts out. OK?”

 

He shudders and his eyes flick away and back again, some of the urgency in them melting. He waits until his breathing slows before he parts his lips again, still biting, and swallows more water. Holds some in his mouth to get his tongue and gums and teeth wet again, and after a moment of thought releases the cup.

 

Furiosa holds it, waits for him to regain his breath and strength and lifts it again for him to finish. Turns to get the mug and notices how hard he’s pressing against his stomach. He’s trembling with it. “Is it pain?”

 

He works his tongue at his lips, voice thin; “s’ gone? The rot?”

 

“Yes, Mari got it out. You’re still not out of danger, but that’s half the battle over.”

 

He takes a deep breath and tilts his head back against the cushion, lies there quietly, fighting down a shudder and turns bleary eyes to Furiosa; “Mug?”

 

She peers into it, sniffs—“It’s sugar solution… It’ll help with the weakness,” The steam is gone but it’s still warm, and she holds it just as she had the water cup, lets him press his fingertips to the edge to control how much goes into his mouth.

 

The first mouthful is hesitant, but by the second his eyes are on her, watching, waiting to see if she’s going to make him take his time with this too, but she only looks at him in warning and he slows.

 

Then a peculiar expression comes over his face and he pulls back, lips pursed.

 

“What is it?” She lowers the mug.

 

He hesitates, dips his chin toward his chest and pushes something red out into his palm with his tongue.

 

It’s mashed and lumpy and naked, but Furiosa recognizes it as a chunk of fruit and she pulls the cup back to stare into it with a grin. “Mari said no pieces…” She shook her head and reached for the spoon, held the mug between her knees, scooped out a few pieces for Max to see. “Apple, Plopper, Lemon… Boiled down with honey, salt and kale— You’re not ‘lergic to them, are you?”

 

He meets her eyes and pulls the piece of fruit back into his mouth with a look of urgency, says nothing, lets her press the mug to his lips again and sucks down the thickening juice. She manages to get three spoonfuls of pieces into his mouth before his lids start drooping and his interest in the proceedings fades.

 

He doesn’t swell, doesn’t start itching—No ‘lergics. Furiosa pushes the mug back onto the desk and tugs his blankets up into place, tucks the top most under his chin. She offers three fingers of water in the cup, watches him swallow them with his eyes closed and sits there until he stops responding. Until his eyes only pop open every ten, or twenty count only to close again within three.

 

He shifts his head against the cushion and after a moment looks away.

 

She settles her feet on the edge of the bed by his knee and slouches in the chair, tries to find a comfortable angle to rest in, “Are you hurting yet?”

 

After a moment, “No.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Furiosa?”

 

Something jags in her belly and she turns to look at him. Feels some strange connection between them like the dull hum of electricity.

 

There’s a peculiar expression on his face when he looks to her, curious and perhaps hyper aware. His mouth opens and closes and he gets part of a word out, has to stop and think, then starts again; “I—hmm— remember your face… When I—when it was bad,” He blinks slowly, has wait for enough strength to keep speaking, doesn’t seem to find the words when he has it, so he just hums again and shifts his scarred left hand under the blanket, bumps her thigh with his fingers and stills, fades into sleep.

 

She breathes in past a tightness in her chest, nods and rests her hand on his head, says nothing.

 

0-0-0

 

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	6. Rain on a Sunny Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update on Sunday? Le GASP! You can thank my shoddy internet connection and real life woes.
> 
> Chapter contains discussion of the inevitable functions of the human body.
> 
> Potty humor at its finest starts now. I'm so refined I bleed guzzoline!

**SIX**

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

Max’s face is mashed into her breast when she wakes up. She’d moved to the bed hours earlier to hold the pipe for him when the pain ramped up, must have fallen asleep to the herbal smell of it because the pipe is lying in the crease between her body and his—and his prickly face is pressing into her shoulder and the top of her right breast. A little patch of damp drool on her shirt.

 

Max _snores._

 

It’s a grating sound like an engine that won’t turn over. Not exactly loud, she wouldn’t be able to hear it from the other room, but she’s become hyper aware of it, hyper aware of the warm fact of him lined up against her side. She doesn’t dare move. He’s sleeping—actually SLEEPING, his body is limp and pliant, he’s not in pain—She relishes in it. In the fact that he’s resting—healing—and unless something awful happens, she won’t have to watch him die, or watch someone carry his body away to the shredders.

 

She tilts her chin down and catches sight of him. His cheeks have a little more color this morning. His plush lips don’t look as dry or cracked and his breathing is slow and deep—even if he is snoring.

 

He smells like sweat, sickness, iodine, and old blood. His hair is greasy and lank but she brushes her fingers through it feels the rumble of his voice, a hum and he tilts his crown against her shoulder. The hand on his belly opens and closes, his body goes tense, then slowly relaxes with a sigh. He sleeps for a while longer like that, still and almost peaceful. Until then he’s not— and his body ramps up into rigidity once more, his face scrunching in discomfort.

 

He groans into Furiosa’s chest.

 

“What’s wrong?” She breathes, feels a chilled tremor run up his spine and the hand on his stomach opens and closes, opens and closes.

 

“’water.”

 

“I’ll get some,” She makes to ease herself away but he shakes his head minutely.

 

“Me—“ He swallows; “—I have water.”

 

She blinks, blinks again and finally understands. “Oh.”

 

His eyes crack open, brows pinched together in his urgency. She can feel the arm he’d had tucked against her side moving down, pressing against his crotch to hold it back. “Fast.”

 

She nods, clenches her jaw and disentangles herself from him as carefully as she can, pushes to her feet and moves toward the curtain.

 

He whimpers.

 

After so many hours without hearing pain in his voice it brings her up short and she turns, sees he’s pushed one foot from under the blanket but that’s as far as he’s managed to move. His right hand is a fist against the cushion on his side.

 

“You can’t move,” It’s not a realization. She’s known this. Had to hold a cup of water for him, and hold his very head up no less than a handful of hours ago. But it feels like she’s only just noticing.

 

His eyes are shut, resigned, and he wets his lips before he speaks; “No.”

 

“I’m not touching your shift.”

 

He makes a choking noise. Screws his face up and forces himself to breathe through flared nostrils.

 

Where’s Mari—Mari’s unashamed of stuff like this. She doesn’t care, doesn’t have a reason to care or be wary of this room, or there being a man in it, or that man having intact genitals.

 

He’s going to piss all over the bed if she doesn’t do something and then Mari WILL care.

 

Furiosa isn’t any stranger to men and their genitals and their pissing matches standing on the edge of the lift and seeing how far they can splatter. She’s laughed at it just the same as they have. But it seems different to have Max unable to move and so desperate to piss he might do it accidentally all over himself and the bed and his bandages.

 

She muttered, turned and strode quickly to the far wall, caught one of the metal loops of the corner sand pot and pulled it over with her foot to the edge of the bed. “There’s three ways we can do this…”

 

Max eyed her, eyed the pot and curled his nose up.

 

“Well, can you stand?”

 

He thought about it, wiggled his left foot toward the edge of the bed again and had to bite his tongue. He shook his head.

 

“Okay, then. Two ways,” She moved forward and lifted the blanket away from his chest, put it in the chair and went for the other one, got it halfway up and his fingers clamped on the edge, voice raised high in surprise.

 

She paused, blinked; “What is it?”

 

His eyes were locked on the ceiling, wide and blue and only a little cloudy. “’m naked.”

 

“You’re only just realizing this now?”

 

His mouth opened and closed but no words came out, a little more color crept into his cheeks.

 

“You can worry about it later,” She nudged his right arm and the cushion out of the way and, for his peace of mind, left the corner of the blanket draped over his lap. “I’ll help you sit up, just keep your arm around my neck,” She bent forward and guided his left arm to her shoulder, felt it curl a little against her nape, pushed her arm under his and her stump against the back of his neck. “Stay relaxed, if it hurts too much tell me.”

 

He nodded, breath quick, chin down, jaw tense.

 

She rocked upright drawing him with her. He made a sound, low through parted lips. Shock and disorientation. It tightened into a grunt when the pain came and she stood there for a long moment holding his head to her stomach, keeping him upright while he pressed both flat palms against his gut.

 

“Breathe,” She demonstrated, deep in and out, in and out. Felt him hum weakly in return.

 

A rash of gooseflesh rose across the back of his shoulders and down his arms and she drew the blanket up over his right side, draped the edge across him. “’feel sick.”

 

“You’re probably dizzy, do you want me to get help?”

 

“No.”

 

She should probably get help. “Do your kidneys hurt?”

 

“No…”

 

That meant yes.

 

“How bad?”

 

A grunt, he shifted his face out of the fabric of her shirt took a few more slow deep breaths. “Aches.”

 

“But they don’t _hurt?”_

“No.”

 

“Did you have water while you were sick?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then you’re lying,” She scuffed her hand up the back of his head, “Need to make sure you don’t have blood in it,” She peered around the room, found no alternative. “Whose out there?”

 

There wasn’t an immediate answer. “Uh—Mother Dag just left, but I can go fetch her.”

 

Spaz then. “Anybody else?”

 

“Not yet, Lady Cheedo’s on her way down from the gardens.”

 

“Can’t wait—Need… need now,” Max barely breathed it but the urgency was overwhelming. He was shaking with it.

 

Furiosa hissed, “I need some help… A jar—There’s a plastic one near the plants.”

 

Spaz’s feet slapped off rhythm against the floor and half a moment later he appeared through the curtain with the jar, thrust it forward with wide eyes. “Should I wake Mari?”

 

“No,” She jerked her chin back toward the door, “If I need anything else—“

 

Max groaned.

 

Furiosa turned nudged the jar under the blanket to him—and heard it slip from his shaking fingers and hit the ground with a soft thunk. She went to grab it before it rolled under the bed but he snarled audibly and her arm went back around him, keeping him upright. “Sorry… sorry, just go ahead. Try not to piss on my shoes.”

 

He tried to look, so he could at least aim but the room was spinning.

 

“It’s down, straight down,” Furiosa shifted her feet, hoped that there was no blood and his kidneys were undamaged.

 

He seemed heavier than he had a moment ago, breathing labored, body tense. “’can’t… It—“

 

“You can’t?”

 

“It won’t—won’t come _out!”_ He was shaking.

 

“He’s scared,” Spaz was still hovering outside the curtain. “Scared it’ll hurt—Happens.”

 

Max snarled, tried to draw back but Furiosa turned her head toward the curtain and shouted for him; “Unless you want to help you get OUT!”

 

Spaz retreated to outside the vault, but spoke loudly enough to be heard, “How long it’s been since he had water? It’s going to hurt!”

 

He was right, Furiosa knew, curled her fingers in the hair on Max’s nape and brushed her stump up and down his back.

 

He went even more tense; “’re makin’ it worse!”

 

“Do you want me to leave?”

 

He pressed his face into her abdomen, she could feel the quick hot puffs of his breath. He tilted his head down again, managed to find some kind of stability and enough will to make his bladder unclench. He flinched when it started, ground his teeth and focused on his breath.

 

“Any blood?” She called, aware of the sound of fluid hitting the sand. “Max, is there blood?”

 

“Hmm,” It came out like a snarl, he took a shuddering breath and braced his right hand on her hip, trembling and growing more lax by the second. It seemed to go on and on, but finally she realized he wasn’t just leaning on her to keep from falling over, but something else. Comfort maybe, if such a thing even existed anymore.

 

“Are you done?”

 

He nodded minutely.

 

“Any blood?”

 

“Just dark… no blood.”

 

“Good,” She let out a relieved sigh and petted his hair again; “Good.”

 

“This… bandages‘re squeezing too hard.”

 

“It’s because you’re not sitting up straight. Get you down again it won’t be so bad.”

 

He hummed, swallowed with some difficulty. She felt the hard knob of his throat bob against her stomach.

 

She nudged the sand pot under the edge of the bed with her foot and pushed her hand through his hair again, needing the repetition. “Since you’re up already, feel like getting clean?”

 

He whined and pulled his brows down, his shoulders going tight.

 

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” She worked her tongue at the backs of her teeth; “Do you think you can sit here by yourself?”

 

He didn’t say anything.

 

“I need to get some things. There’s no need to make you get up again later to wash if you’re—“

 

“Please… I-I need to lie down.”

 

She bit her lip; “It hurt?”

 

A soft twitch goes through him, but it’s all the answer she needed. “Okay, hold on to me,” She guided his left arm around her neck, eased him back and straightened long enough to catch his knees and swing both legs up as well.

 

He was already pulling at the quilt, trying to draw it over himself. He was a strangely modest creature when his vulnerability was an issue and he had a choice in the matter. She remembered him climbing out of the rig so long ago to leak down between the wheels, how he’d barely stepped out of her—and the girls’—line of sight before he hitched his trousers open. She remembered Capable had stifled a laugh and slapped a hand over her mouth and the War Boy—Nux—had rolled his eyes; ‘Wasting good water.’

 

She gave the blanket a pull and let him draw it over—let him feel accomplished at doing it for himself, then covered his legs and feet and motioned to the tin cup on the desk.

 

His eyes followed it, hesitated and with a resigned sigh nodded. Laid there silent and didn’t make much of a fuss, seemed less inclined to refuse when he knew how much the smoke helped.

 

Cheedo appeared in the doorway about the time Furiosa was sitting the tin cup aside and spreading the second blanket over Max’s chest and arms. She had Dag’s daughter Blossom on her hip. A thin, tall, child with dark blonde hair. She was chewing on a bit of cabbage. “She wanted to see him, I hope that’s alright.”

 

Max’s eyes were wide, locked on the girl and for a moment it seemed he may try to fling himself out of the bed, but slowly he relaxed, blinked and focused on her. Her face was almost uncannily shaped like Dag’s. The only hint Max could find that didn’t seem to belong to her mother was her hair and possibly the shape of her chin, though all he’d ever seen of Joe’s chin had been bloody and splintered, so he couldn’t know truthfully.

 

“Blossom, this is Max. He helped your Mum and us days ago.”

 

Blossom pursed her lips around her cabbage and hid her face in Cheedo’s neck.

 

“She says hello.”

 

Max grunted, wasn’t capable of much else at the moment.

 

Cheedo waved a hand in the air, dispelling a bit of smoke that felt too thick. “Max is sick and he needs to rest… Did you want to give him your present?”

 

The girl nodded and wriggled from Cheedo’s grip, slid down her body and padded up to the edge of the bed. Presented a tiny fistful of stunted Chamomile flowers.

 

Cheedo smiled; “When they dry you put them in hot water and it makes tea. It helps you sleep.”

 

Max’s left hand twitched out from under the blanket and the girl put the stems between his scarred fingers then thumped her fist to her brow and pushed her hand up, fingers spread—giggled—and scurried to hide behind Cheedo’s leg.

 

Furiosa bent close, “She doesn’t talk. She can, she calls out for Dag sometimes, but she chooses not to otherwise.”

 

Max understood that well enough. Everybody talked, all the time. Sometimes silence meant more. Sometimes there was nothing worth saying. His right hand shook but when he saw her pale eye appear around Cheedo’s thigh again he lifted his arm and returned the gesture she’d made, watched her grin broadly, crookedly and hide away again.

 

Cheedo smiled at him, grateful and patted the girl’s curly head. “Well, come on… It’s time for your lessons, Bean’s waiting.”

 

Blossom lifted her arms with a soft, low grunt and Cheedo scooped her up and disappeared.

 

“Bean’s the… teacher?” Max yawned, mashed his hand onto his stomach and exhaled slowly through pursed lips.

 

Furiosa shook her head; “No, her brother.”

 

His brows pulled down in confusion.

 

“Dag had twins… Bean came out first and everything was pretty much ok—Blossom came out backward—Dag nearly bled to death, but Mari got it stopped. She was lucky. I’ve seen women and babies die when they come out backward like that, or if there’s more than one.”

 

“The boy… He’s—“

 

“He’s small. And so gentle… Dag was afraid of him at first, but he was all smiles and softness and she fell in love with him. She’s a good mother.”

 

“The older one—the one that was here… Spaz. Who is he?”

 

“Spaz is a lancer. Runs patrol with the new trade rig. He’s good. I trust him… Toast trusts him. Dunny thinks they’re a good match.”

 

Max hummed; “I remember him—he was painted—kept a line on her when—uh—when she got in my truck.”

 

Furiosa nodded. “He would have pinned your arms while she ripped out your throat if you’d touched her.”

 

His lips quirk up and his eyes fall closed; “Good.”

 

0-0-0

 

There’s a woman in the room Max doesn’t recognize when he opens his eyes. She’s not one of the Vuvalini. Younger, with dark blonde hair and a gray scarf over the lower half of her face. She’s plump—Broad— with a barrel chest and scarred, calloused hands. One of which only has three fingers on it. There’s no dent in her palm saying it had been cut away, and Max wonders if she’d been born without it. She smells heavily of iron and wet and it takes him a moment to realize she smells like blood and the callouses on her hands are stained dark with it.

 

“Max?” Furiosa’s sitting on the edge of the bed, she turns and regards him evenly, calmly—projects slow, easy confidence at him in an effort to chase away the panic that’s growing in his chest and aching gut. “Max, it’s OK. This is Banka… She grows the Fool’s Weed. She came to see how you’re feeling.”

 

Max peers up at her from the side of his eyes, distrusting. Something seems familiar—OFF—about her, and it isn’t until she lowers her chin and looks right at him that he realizes what it is.

 

It’s her eyes. She has Joe’s eyes.

 

It takes him a moment to see them as anything but cold and cruel, simply because of their color. But Banka’s shoulders are loose, easy. Her breath near silent. She tugs down her scarf and her face beneath it is splattered with pock scars. She has a wide nose and small mouth. “It’s good to see you awake… From the way Spazums talked you were on your death bed.”

 

Max felt like his tongue was welded to the roof of his mouth, after the initial realization he couldn’t quite meet her gaze, fell short of it and felt his muscles growing tense.

 

“Lady Furiosa says the smoke bothers you… If it’s too much you can eat it. I know some of the Boys would do that so nobody would know… The Immortan wasn’t keen on those who took it.”

 

Max nodded slowly.

 

“It takes longer, but it works.”

 

Max inhaled slowly and forced himself to speak, voice a halting crackle past his anxiety; “Thank you.”

 

Banka dipped her chin toward her chest and turned back to Furiosa; “I think—if she has the space—that putting some of the plants here would help… They would grow better with real light instead of bulbs.”

 

“If you or Shift want to bring up a few to test I can have a space cleared under the dome.”

 

Banka nodded and took her leave. She didn’t seem one for many words or displays of emotion.

 

Max waited until the woman was gone before he so much as moved, and even then it was to scrub fitfully at his eyes. They felt gritty and his mouth was dry. “’long was I out?”

 

“Not long. You should sleep as much as you can. Your body heals faster when it’s asleep.”

 

He couldn’t argue with it, but everything felt dry and irritated and his wound was aching in a way that reminded him of torn muscle reknitting. The pressure of the bandages around his waist was almost unbearable. He pawed at it over the blanket unconsciously. Tried to find a weakness so he could remove the outer binding layer.

 

“’s too tight.”

 

Furiosa’s brows lowered and she hefted out a breath; “You need to keep pressure on it or you won’t be able to move much of anything.”

 

“’too tight.”

 

She rolled her eyes; “I’ll have Mari look at it when she wakes up,” She stood and went to the water pitcher, poured three or four fingers worth and held it to his lips while he swallowed, let him gulp down a few mouthfuls before she tilted it up and made him wait. She didn’t remove it from his reach this time, but he still growled softly and bumped the aluminum with his teeth in warning. Swallowed and swallowed until she had to refill the cup and bring it back.

 

“When you have to wake up in two hours and piss I’ll have no sympathy for you.”

 

Capable appeared a few moments later with another mug, followed closely by Mari who was hefting an arm load of linens and medical supplies. She still seemed tired, but the weariness was gone from her brow.

 

“Ah, look! He’s up and had a piss!” Mari dropped the linens over his legs and caught the flesh of his cheek between finger and thumb; “And he’s got a bit of color!”

 

He scowled and she drew away with a pat to his head. “You’ve gone about a day with no fever, so now the fun begins. That Spaz boy said you took a piss earlier—any blood?”

 

“No,” Furiosa said evenly; “He said it was just dark.”

 

“Good, good… Any particular odor?”

 

He rolled his eyes back into his head, tried to pretend they weren’t discussing the consistency of his urine and pressed on his stomach in preparation of clearing his throat; “Bandages ‘re too tight.”

 

“Eh?” Mari said cocking a brow; “Let me see,” She threw back the blankets and Max couldn’t quite catch them before they flapped too far down to be reached. He felt exposed and didn’t like the way Capable’s jaw dropped open and she turned with a squeak and a hand over her mouth.

 

Furiosa—bless her—flipped the edge of the sheet over him again while Mari untied the corset like fitting over his bandages.

 

He felt each knot come undone and knew quickly why it had been tied so tightly. It felt bizarre, a numb patch around the wound he hadn’t noticed when the bindings were on. She carefully peeled up the dressings and Max felt lightheaded, could see just enough of his stomach to make out horrible bruises at either end of the incision, the skin there was puckered and jagged as if torn and there were so many stitches—a long dark line of them. Was—was that stain across his middle blood?

 

“Whoop!” Mari moved, grabbed his ankles and lifted them high, “Look at that, all pale again, hold these girl, keep them up!” She pushed his legs toward Furiosa and went to his head, fanning his face with the flat of her hand. “Don’t go fainting like a pup on me, that looks bad on both of us!”

 

His eyes finally stopped rolling and he moaned, felt the too fast beat of his heart in his head and a violent ache in his middle. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been before, but it still hurt enough that he wanted to bow around it protectively.

 

“Blood loss—“ Mari snorted, half amusement half well concealed terror. “Doesn’t matter how big you are, lose enough blood you’re no better than an infant,” She patted his knee and helped Furiosa lower his legs back to the pallet, nudged his head to the side so he couldn’t see what she was doing.

 

He decided ignorance wasn’t so much the path of cowards, but the road of the wise, and kept his eyes closed, let her smear whatever sticky goo she wanted at the edges of the wound and press clean cloth over it.

 

“Should we clean him now?” Furiosa’s voice.

 

“No, give it until tomorrow evening, we’ll move him out into the sun for a while, help building his strength and give us room to clean the bed. Maybe if we’re lucky his bowels’ll start moving again before the and we can get some trousers on him… Is Capable alright?”

 

“I’m fine,” She muttered from the other side of the curtain. "I just didn’t expect… HE didn’t look like that.”

 

Mari snorted; “Well this one’s what you’d call _natural._ ‘s what healthy men look like.”

 

“Oh,” Capable said with an audible sigh, “Oh, good.”

 

Furiosa tried to stifle a chuckle, patted Max on the chest in what was intended to be reassurance.

 

Mari pressed the fat end of a listening horn to his belly and bent close, said to breathe normally, moved it this way and that. “Still quiet… Try rubbing,” She pressed her palm under his ribs on the right side and made a firm slow swipe toward his left, “Carefully,” She repeated it, then followed the length of his side on the left downward. “Need to get your insides up and going again. That’s the next issue. Kidneys are alright, now we gotta move your bowels. I’ll send Sorcha up with another Sugar Solution and something to help kick things into motion… If you start cramping let us know. May have to flush you out from the other end to get the engine going.”

 

Max didn’t understand what she was talking about at first, until he did, and then he tried to ignore her stupid giggling and pawed at the edge of the blanket.

 

“Try moving your legs in a bit. Just bend your knees and such, don’t strain yourself, but moving your body helps your body _move,”_ She grinned wickedly and piled the linens on the desk away from the tin cup and other various odds and ends that had started to collect. She caught Furiosa’s shoulder as she was moving out the door and patted the flesh usually hidden under metal and leather; “You’re doing good. Keep it up,” And with that she left.

 

0-0-0

 

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	7. Wants and Needs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa, you're fooling nobody.

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

Max sleeps. A lot.

 

He is probably the most boring person Furiosa has ever been trapped in a room with, and that included two sleeping newborns. At least with Blossom and Bean there had been the added novelty that they were both NEW, tiny and so—so TINY! Still scented like milk and swaddling and fresh new skin.

 

Max…

 

Max _snored._

 

And his face in sleep was soft, barely creased from sun and time at the edges of his eyes and lips.

 

Lips—They’d felt rough against her own, too hot from fever—but there’d been something deeper when they’d parted and he’d inhaled through her. A flutter in her stomach from danger and fear and hope.

 

He looked so different when he was asleep. Like nothing mattered or could touch him. Maybe it was the blood loss, or the Fool’s Weed that left him so pliant and warm and nigh unrecognizable from the tense, half feral man he was when awake.

 

She shook her head and turned back to her book. A time later he woke with his face scrunched because he had to piss and, okay, maybe he was as interesting as a newborn on that front, head still leaned into her chest right hand braced on the bed beside his hip, left hidden under the modest drape of the sheet, but at least a newborn didn’t weigh so much, or insist on being propped up. Newborns just went in their wrappings and you changed them, that was the end of it.

 

Max—

 

Max clung to her, and it was uncomfortable to stand there between his knees, holding him up while he relieved himself. It was intimate and private and he smelled like sick and sweat and she was tired of it.

 

She went out into the main room while he slept, propped the curtain open and went about setting up the stove Dag usually brewed tea on. She sent Toast in search of soap and Spaz sat guard by the door, warning away Pups and curious women who came to peek at the sleeping man in the vault.

 

One of the Milk Mothers brought down a bottle for him, said it would help him regain his strength and peered in at him with a high blush to her cheeks.

 

“What are you doing?” Furiosa said, bent at the pool to collect water.

 

The woman hesitated then scurried over and cupped a plump hand to Furiosa’s ear; “There’s a tale that he’s a specimen… He’s really virile,” When Furiosa just scowled at her the woman motioned to a place halfway down her plump thigh. _“Virile?”_

 

 _“What?”_ She shook her head, “No, _no_ —who told you that!”

 

“I heard it from Chezza, and she from Margin. I don’t know where she heard it.”

 

Furiosa had an idea. She rolled her eyes; “It’s nothing like that.”

 

“Oh, it’s small?”

 

She felt her face heat because, no… no, he wasn’t. But he wasn’t frightful either. She shook her head brows pulling down in agitation; “The engine fits the chassis,” Then after a moment of thought; “Why in the AllMother’s name are you so interested in his shift!”

 

The woman peered upward innocently, pink in her cheeks. “I’m not the only one,” And she scurried away before Furiosa could chastise her over it.

 

0-0-0

 

Max was blinking around irritably when Furiosa came down the stairs and went back into the room. Found him lying there working his heels against the bed as if climbing short small stairs, or learning the steps to one of the dances the Vuvalini had been secretly teaching some of the women.

 

Furiosa leaned against the doorway and flexed the muscles in her stump, felt the metal fingers hanging near her thigh open and close. He didn’t seem to notice her at first, had focused on something between his face and the ceiling. He breathed deeply and held it for a moment, then let it out slowly, passed his hand in a circle over his stomach.

 

She stared. Found her awareness of this moment significant in the sense that he was entirely oblivious of her presence. There was no reason for him to be anything other than what he really was in this instant. Nobody's proximity to be wary of, nobody's safety to worry about.

 

It wasn’t strange, she’d crept up on many people, but it had never felt like this before. Never felt like a game, or a secret shared between friends. What was strange about it, was the fact that it was Max and she had never seen him without some kind of barrier. Max who even muzzled and half dead of thirst and suffering what was likely a concussion, had managed to fight for control, the same Max who had screamed and wept in pain and fought mindlessly with them in the corridor barely three days ago—had never looked so open and trusting. Even delusional and raving in the midst of agony and fever he’d stared around nearly frantic, reduced as he was to a creature of pain and fragility, his eyes had caught every movement, wide and desperate. He’d growled at anyone who got too close, flinched from every touch. The only time comparable to this was the moment she’d pulled open the truck door and found him lying there, or while he’d been spread out and open on Mari’s cutting table.

 

He was lying there completely at ease, working to heal himself. She found it hypnotizing, watching him be human instead of the myth the Sisters’ stories had made him into for the people of the Citadel the feral turned ally… And if Furiosa was being honest, to herself as well. She remembered the red of his blood and the blue of his eyes in panic and pain, but time and imagination had warped him into something OTHER.

 

Maybe this was why, apparently, some of the women around the keep had become infatuated with him. He was so far removed from what they’d learned to expect from men. He’d become some unreachable paragon in their eyes, when the fact of him was subtly different.

 

He was dirty, scared, selfish, and could be cruel if it suited his purposes… But he could also be unbelievably selfless, brave, and kind. He was not some wild eyed story, he was a man— flawed and warped, and broken, but still good somewhere deep inside. Still worth trying to save.

 

She must have hummed, or made some small noise, breathed too deeply, or her prosthetic made a clinking sound, because his eyes flicked to her self-consciously and his body stilled.

 

She looked down caught, and cleared her throat, stepped fully into the room; “How are you feeling?”

 

He blinked slowly and took a long breath; “Weak… Mm—Head feels weird.”

 

“Weird how?” She leaned her hip against the desk.

 

He pursed his lips, thought silently for a moment, “Always felt tight before… All over. Now it doesn’t.”

 

She nodded slowly, thought maybe his eyes looked different, not as likely to twitch or flinch at nothing.

 

He huffed and rubbed small circles over his wound; “’itches like shit.”

 

She felt the corner of her lips tick upward; “Pretty sure that means it’s healing.”

 

He focused on the ceiling again, made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat and kept rubbing. Curled his fingers as if thinking about scratching but restrained himself.

 

“Max?”

 

He met her eyes, brows lifting in question.

 

The words escaped her and she had to swipe the tip of her tongue over her lips to catch them again; “You—“ And they still failed her; “—You stink.”

 

He didn’t even flinch, just lifted his left brow a little higher. He knew, it was obvious, the idea that he possibly didn’t was absurd considering everything he’d gone through, and the fact he truly couldn’t remember the last time he’d bathed.

 

“It’s a good idea to clean yourself to make sure you don’t get dirt around the wound and get an infection,” Nice cover. She could hear Mari cackling in her head.

 

He knew it was a logical idea, but he still scowled at her, argued for the sake of arguing because he’d been stuck in this bed for DAYS and, despite the lingering weakness and lethargy, it was getting boring; “I can’t move.”

 

And her normally stoic face went a little pink along the bridge of her nose. “I know that.”

 

His brows pulled down warily, eyes narrowing; “And you’re… going to help?”

 

“If I have to. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

 

His lower lip pushed out, face scrunched in a scowl.

 

She almost had to look away, thought the fact of him sitting there with his hair dirty and bent at odd angles practically pouting at her like Bean did made humor bubble up in her chest.

 

“Who do you think got your clothes off of you in the first place?”

 

The flesh furled along the bridge of his nose, displeased, but it was too late to do anything about it.

 

“You were out of your head, it was either that or let the fever cook you.”

 

He hummed, looked toward the wall and back. A deep breath— his face still pulled a little, a twinge from his stomach perhaps—and he sighed, nodded.

 

“Mari suggested moving you out under the dome—If you can make it that far, the sun will do you some good.”

 

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded, rubbed his face. “Is she helping too?”

 

“Later, probably.”

 

His nose wrinkled and he seemed to pout again. It was damned near hysterical.

 

Furiosa shifted back to her feet and moved to the bed, guided his arm around her neck and fitted her own around him, tried to keep the blanket between the metal of her left and his skin, had caught herself between the joints in her fingers and mechanical wrist before and been pinched bloody.

 

He grunted only once as he was levered upright. Pressed both hands flat onto the bed to keep his back straight and relieve some of the pressure from his abdomen. Sat there without aid breathing with his chin up, eyes closed.

 

Furiosa caught the sheet and wedged the corner under her belt, put her flesh hand on his head; “Ready for stage two?”

 

He looked up at her uncertainly.

 

“Can’t move you unless you’re on your feet.”

 

His lips compressed and he looked at his knees, the left exposed nearly to his hip and the right just a lump beneath the sheet. He seemed to think deeply for a moment, cleared his throat and spoke. “’won’t make it,” He raked his tongue over his lips; “’ll fall.”

 

“Dizzy already?”

 

A nod.

 

“Wanna try anyway?”

 

“Yes.”

 

She grinned to herself, wedged her kneecaps against his and bent forward; “This is gonna hurt, just lean on me, OK?”

 

He braced himself, took a breath and nodded. Skittered his gaze across the ceiling and walls nervously as she ducked under his arm, laid his own across her back and felt oddly infantile. He tried desperately not to flinch when she wedged her hands under his hips, the metal one cold and sporting a few rough edges. Made a warning noise in his throat and felt himself speak without intending to; “Don’t damage the goods.”

 

Furiosa’s head sagged and he felt small tremors run through her, the soft sound of laughter in the back of her throat.

 

It gave him a moment to breathe and prepare himself, to settle his feet flat on the floor in hopes that once he was up he would stay there… or at least only fall backward if he couldn’t.

 

Furiosa cleared her throat, nodded and pressed against his knees with her own; “And… UP!”

 

It hurt, she hadn’t been lying. But it wasn’t as bad as he feared it would be. Not much more than first movement for any wound he’d been nursing for a number of days. Even the dizziness wasn’t unexpected, but he still wasn’t exactly prepared for it. Sagged and gripped at her neck gasping for breath, trying to keep the encroaching darkness from the edges of his vision and that draining feeling from his head to his knees. The wound throbbed and he couldn’t make his legs straighten, snarled into Furiosa’s shoulder and tried again.

 

“You OK?” Her voice seemed to be half a world away; “Max, are you OK?”

 

He nodded weakly, inhaled and let it out, tried to lift his head. Bloodloss, Mari had said, made newborns out of everyone.

 

Furiosa was grinning, had her hands on his ribs above the bandaging, the prosthetic one a little lower, the flesh one curled a little tighter into his skin.

 

Max had enough sense to reach for the sheet where she’d tucked it at her belt, held it to his chest and tried not to shiver in the draft against his bare back.

 

“OK?”

 

He nodded again, stronger and kept his left hand on her shoulder while she pulled the sheet around him, draped it over his shoulders and ducked under his arm again, hand on his side, took more of his weight than he was strictly comfortable with and just stood there, waiting.

 

He peered down at his feet, stupid looking things, bare and pale and rubbed in places from ill-fitting boots. He scowled at them, felt they’d somehow traitored him for not holding all of his weight solidly, and took the first shuffling step forward.

 

His knee gave out and the stitches in his belly pulled tight. Teeth bared against the sting, Furiosa kept him from dropping.

 

Another step. Steadier, that knee whole and undamaged—

 

Oh, that was how this would go. He shook his head, froze.

 

“What is it? Does it hurt?”

 

He shook his head again motioned to the offending appendage; “Bad leg.”

 

“Ah!” She nodded knowingly, “Capable cleaned the brace for you, we didn’t think you’d need it for a few more days yet. It’s out in the main room… Wanna keep going?”

 

As uncomfortable as it was, shuffling around in a sheet, barely able to keep himself upright—it felt good to be out of that bed. Felt good to be able to stand without that horrible jag of pain in his gut. The pain he felt was different, tolerable. A healing pain. Oddly enough, a good pain.

 

“Do you want to keep going, or sit?”

 

“Keep going.”

 

She grinned a little, bowed her head to hide it but the pull of her lips seemed so natural he couldn’t help but stare at it. The points of her teeth, the smooth pink of her lips.

 

—The taste of her mouth and heat of her as she’d breathed into him. Green and alive and sweet—

 

His heart pounded a little harder and he blamed it entirely on the blood loss.

 

He’d never seen the vault before, outside the room he’d become familiar with it seemed alien. A round dome like room shattered on one side. He couldn’t exactly tell if the stones had been carved out of the living rock or brought in from some far off old world site. Oddly enough it reminded him of something he’d seen in a dream—hundreds of days ago. Maybe memories, maybe conjurings of a water starved mind.

 

One step.

 

Two step.

 

The muscles in his thighs burned just from that and he shook his head in disbelief, blinked dazedly at the brightness of the room. The splashes of vibrant color on the walls, images from the Fury Road immortalized in reds, purples, blues, and greens. He could make out the seven Vuvalini mothers with their hands raised cradling a white bird with a red eye, lifting it to freedom. Two, the eldest and youngest, with yellow circles in tiny writing around their heads.

 

The War Rig, shedding a snake like skin and emerging as the Dragon, black and red banners traded for green and white.

 

Ten women— the sisters, Furiosa and the remaining Vuvalini standing guard with their hands raised around a miniature of the Citadel, above which in white and gold with wings of their own three more, arms curved down, protecting, words written around their heads and across their breasts. Max can’t make them out, they’re too far away, too small, but he can feel them. Feel the energy and intent put into the paint and the care and the detail.

 

“Gotta step over this,” Furiosa has him standing at the edge of a tiny canyon filled with water. The overflow drain of the center pool.

 

Max blinked at it in confusion, followed it back to its source, then to its outlet, spilling over the ledge down into the bottom of the dome. He sees the stairs leading up sees a low pallet, barely reaching his knees—it’ll be hell to stand from—more of a couch than a bed. Someone’s pulled a small table up to one edge of it, put books and a bottle of mother’s milk beside a metal carafe of water.

 

The dome overlooks the entirety of the waste. Endless sand and rock. He can see the last highway stretching a ruddy black line toward Gastown. Can see the other buttes and people as tiny dots working on them. Cable pulled cars full of produce and water and workers. Sees the tiny blips of boys hanging on threads down the sides of the towers working on attaching more windmills and scaffolds and pulleys.

 

There are vining flowers crawling up one side of the dome, and when he peers downward sees a space sectioned off by tables covered in potted plants, herbs and flowers and things he’s never seen before. Tall fragrant flowers growing up a ladder set against a curving wall below what he now recognizes as the tiny window in the room he’d been kept in. There are paintings there as well. Blue skies with clouds, desert earth spotted with little bunches of flowers and greenery. There’s another couch down there, larger, shaded with what takes him a moment to realize is fern and vine and palms.

 

The floor is decorated with pieces of colored tile set into grout, moss grows along the edges of the curved glass and floor, fat green tufts of it. Flowers—So many flowers, and spiky little succulents in curved cracked bowls.

 

He feels dizzy with it, feels an ache in his chest.

 

It’s beautiful.

 

“Max?”

 

He shakes his head, grunts. He’s standing there leaning heavily on her staring with wide eyes and a slack jaw. He closes his mouth with a click of teeth and works his tongue around to draw moisture back into his gums.

 

Furiosa looks at him with a strange tilt to her head, peers down the stairs then back at the small couch at her side. “Do…” She looks back to the stairs, considers how difficult it would end up being but does it anyway. Spaz could help move him if it came to it. “Do you want to sit down there instead?”

 

He doesn’t—wouldn’t, couldn’t say it. But she recognizes the look in his eye as he squashes it.

 

“’s too far. I—hmm—“ He shakes his head.

 

He wants to, but he’s pushed himself near the end of his endurance already, and the thought that he may lose his footing and send them both tumbling down the steps weighs heavily on her.

 

She nods. Turns and helps settle him on the couch, makes sure he’s propped up and as comfortable as possible and shifts the little table to box him in, offer a resting spot for his right elbow. Shakes a frayed brown blanket over him and chuckles when he wrinkles his nose at the fussing.

 

“If you get chilled don’t just sit there, call out, alright?”

 

He nodded, reluctantly, pulled the sheet closed over his chest and blinked around the room, taking in everything he could, memorizing, searching for a defensible position. There really wasn’t one. The room was made to keep things IN. Keep PEOPLE in.

 

From what he could tell the vault was made in three layers. The bottom being the garden under the dome. The next the main floor and the top a curved, half moon area consisting of four small niches. Most of which filled with books. The area directly behind the couch, where Furiosa was going, seemed to be a kitchen of sorts. There was a stove set up against the sloping back wall. There were various implements, a pot starting to steam and boil, a kettle, doing the same, and various skillets and pans hanging on hooks. To the right there was a cabinet filled with mismatched, delicate glass and ceramic dishes, cups, mugs, saucers and plates. To the left of the stove was a storage cupboard. 

 

Farthest left was another niche, he couldn’t see into this one, because of the angle, but assumed it was a mirror to the one across the room from it. On the main floor was the room he’d been in, some grand room and he shuddered to think what went on within it, directly beside it another shallow niche, it was lightless and he felt an itch to discover what was in there. The paintings surrounded the doors, and took up the big flat wall by the main entrance, and near that, on the right was yet another niche, this one deeper with heavy curtains hanging to either side, pushed back—It was filled with a work table and mechanical implements, a bluish glow from an ancient lamp on the bench, diagrams and sketches stuck to the wall with sap glue.

 

Furiosa turned some dial or pushed some button or something on the stove and peered into the pot, then turned to descend again. Nodded to him as she passed and disappeared down the short corridor into the ‘recovery room’.

 

He heard a few soft noises, the scrape of metal on stone as the beds were shifted, found himself focusing less on what Furiosa was doing and more on the greenery he could barely see the tops of.

 

He wondered, absently, if he could make it down there on his own—instantly thought better, but the urge didn’t go away. Something foreign had taken root inside him and he wanted—NEEDED to go down there and see what sorts of living things were prospering under the glass.

 

“Furiosa?” He knew that voice, turned his head and spied Toast coming into the room.

 

She was dressed in brown pants and boots and a black shirt with no sleeves. He could make out lines on her shoulders, feared instantly that they were like his own, but noticed belatedly the solidity of them, the curl of them against the hinges of her flesh.

 

“I’m in here!” Furiosa called.

 

Toast approached cautiously, stopped outside the doorway; “Is he covered?”

 

Max snorted and Toast’s head whipped around to focus on him. Her expression remained cool, but he could see the uptick of her lips.

 

“He’s sunning himself,” Furiosa said in a low tone, seemed muffled.

 

Max lifted his fingers just high enough to be seen over the high back of the couch, twitched them in greeting and turned back to watching the clouds march over the wastes.

 

“I can see that,” Toast said.

 

“Has he drank that milk yet?”

 

Max flinched. He remembered the taste of it splashing on his tongue in the crow place. He muttered to himself and wrapped a hand around the neck of the bottle, and brought it to his lips, swallowed as much as he could stand and put it down again with a harsh click of glass on the tabletop.

 

Toast snorted; “An attempt was made.”

 

“Good enough,” Furiosa appeared with a bundle of soiled linen over her shoulder; “Something the matter?”

 

Toast shook her head, motioned vaguely toward her workshop and down into the corner; “If you don’t need any help.”

 

Furiosa nodded and jerked her chin toward the niche; “Go ahead, you’re not interrupting anything,” She went for the door with the bundle.

 

Toast seemed relieved, took a few long steps toward the niche and stopped, peered at Max and back to the sickroom. She approached slowly, head tilted to the side, face schooled into nonchalance.

 

Max followed her with his eyes, cocked up an eyebrow when she stopped behind the couch to look down at him imperiously. He wondered if maybe he wasn’t encroaching on her space and glanced away unsure.

 

“You’re shorter than I remember,” She said, by way of greeting.

 

He said nothing back, couldn’t really think of a reply.

 

“You look better though—not so much like death,” She propped one hand on her hip and looked down at the toe of her boot; “You-uhm…”

 

“Did I hurt you?”

 

She blinked at him with her dark brows pulled down.

 

“I—I don’t remember… Did I fight? When you got in the truck?”

 

She hesitated, pursed her lips then shook her head; “No. You weren’t well, you—I thought you were dehydrated, tried to give you water and you threw up. Passed out after that… You—You talked. Made me promise to get you back—” Her eyes flitted away then back again; “—Get you back so you could feed the plants,” She hesitated, “I thought you’d died more than once. You got so still.”

 

He swallowed a growing lump in his throat.

 

“But then you’d start talking again,” Her eyes narrowed; “You talk more than I remember.”

 

His lips curled up and he shifted his head against the cushions.

 

Toast shifted on her feet then, the moment passed. She cleared her throat; “Well, I—I’m glad you’re not dead.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

The edge of her mouth lifted, crooked and almost pleased with herself. She nodded and turned made her way into her workshop without another word.

 

Max only barely saw the edges of the lines on her shoulders, the curling shape of them, before she disappeared into her room.

 

Furiosa returned a few moments later and went directly upstairs, took both the pot and kettle off the stove and carried them down… and right into the sick room.

 

Max watched her, worked his tongue at the backs of his teeth trying to discern what she was doing but not half an instant later Spaz and Cheedo came into the room. Cheedo with a set of thick off white linens draped over her arm and a ball of lumpy grey soap in her hands, Spaz with a basin wide and deep enough for a person to sit in over his head and shoulders like a shell, and Max felt his lungs tighten.

 

Oh… Oh she’d been serious.

 

She was going to clean him… Naked.

 

Nudity was a vulnerability he didn’t often allow himself. Occasionally, if it was particularly disserted, or he’d found an oasis somewhere with no sign of human habitation. He’d always been wary, but after making sure the water hadn’t been toxic who was to stop him?

 

Who was to stop anyone, truthfully, from stripping naked out there in the emptiness and wagging their dicks at the wind?

 

It was the idea of being naked in front of other people that made him uncomfortable. When you were naked around other people there were certain things bound to happen, depending on who those people were.

 

If they were friendly and the nakedness was mutual and consensual, then that was one thing… But the last few times he’d not had clothes on around others hadn’t ended up going exactly well. There was very little worse than having to fight for your life completely naked. There were people in this world who took the fact of nudity as an invitation to do things, whether or not you wanted them.

 

There was a great many reasons, after all, that Max didn’t like people.

 

He knew, objectively, that Furiosa wouldn’t do that, but the fear still remained. A logical fear that he had to purposefully try to quell. 

 

Spaz put the tub—that’s what his hazy memory called it—down in the room. It made a hollow sound, metal on stone.

 

“Do you need any help?” Cheedo said.

 

“No, I think I can manage.”

 

Water pouring into the tub, splashing.

 

Cheedo reappeared with a pail, dipped it into the pool. She looked up while it filled and sent Max a small smile, nodded; “Almost done,” And carried the cool water back into the room.

 

Oh, this wasn’t going to end well… Not at all.

 

Spaz came out again as Cheedo was going in and propped his thin hands on his thin hips, peered up at the painting with a hum of thought.

 

Max could see scars on his back—pistons on his shoulder blades with the connecting rods down each arm, the big end bearings at his elbows, a set of three lances with skulls on the tip between the pistons, shafts down the length of his spine, ending in a flame, when he turned Max could make out another flame on each hipbone where they protruded from above his waistband with a wrench low between them. There were new ones now, still pink against his pale skin, a vine split below his midriff and curling up his ribs, little flowers, and a curl of dots along each collar bone smallest to largest near his throat. He was a mix of old and new.  He glanced into Toast’s room and lifted his chin in acknowledgement then slipped back out into the corridor.

 

Cheedo appeared a moment later, smiled and lifted her fingers in a wave then lowered them, dusted the seams of her trousers. She didn’t speak, picked up a chair and went back into the room.

 

Max turned his head, focused on a cable car he could see moving across the jagged passage between the other two towers, saw miniscule people traversing catwalks back and forth. Saw one of the boys on a rope winching himself upward again.

 

Furiosa’s boots made a distinct sound on the stone and he couldn’t bring himself to turn and look at her. His skin felt tight, and for the first time in a long time, he actually FELT sticky and unclean.

 

Furiosa crossed her arms over the back of the couch, her living fingers plucking at a fray in the ancient upholstery. “Ready?”

 

He wasn’t, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he didn’t struggle—didn’t really do much to help either—but let himself be lifted. Tried to ignore the pressure of Furiosa’s hand on the curve of his ass and held back a grunt at the tender pull of his wound.

 

It was a slow process. Almost an hour in the sun had loosened his muscles.

 

“How are you… water wise?”

 

He pursed his lips, tried to keep the sheet from draping open at his front. It wasn’t a pressing issue, but if he was meant to bathe then it would become one quickly. He made a sound in the back of his throat.

 

“Do you want to go back to the sand pot or try the water closet?”

 

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

 

She nodded, veered him off course toward the dark niche he’d spotted earlier. He could make out shapes beyond it as they approached, a short pedestal of some kind and possibly a chair—

 

Furiosa scraped her metal hand against the wall, found some sort of toggle or button and the next moment a sickly green light filled the little room and Max felt his jaw unhinge.

 

It was a toilet.

 

An actual, functioning toilet from the hollow dripping noise he could hear in the tank.

 

He hadn’t seen a functioning toilet in years. Thousands of days. He remembered Cheedo, so long ago now, remembered her bare feet in the sand, the billowing folds of white linen swathed around her thin body; ‘He gave us the high life!’

 

High life, right… Luxuries while outside their window people starved to death. Pets… He’d kept them as pets and breeding stock, pampered them and taken their ability to say no.

 

A leaky toilet and a cracked sink with a rust ring around the drain. A damp little cave with a pipe in the floor to let the waste run out.

 

Max didn’t really remember what to do, honestly. He had a vague inkling that it involved remembering to put the seat down, or having to use a length of bent wire to fish his keys out again when tiny hands—

 

It startled him, a face swimming up in his memory, but no violent flash, no clench of his muscles. Just the face, small and grinning. Little hands shaped like miniatures of his own. He gave his head a shake, awed, startled maybe, wetted his lips. “’s’it work?”

 

She hummed in agreement. “Well as it can, yes. Will you be OK if I leave you for a minute?”

 

He didn’t know honestly, shrugged.

 

“I’m not gonna have to prop you up again, am I?”

 

From across the room Toast made a strangled snorting sound, choked laughter and hunched further over her work.

 

“There a door?”

 

“Just the curtain,” She tugged on it.

 

He shuffled farther into the room, felt the solidity of her arms leaving him and dropped a heavy palm onto the edge of the sink to keep his legs from folding. It was a tight fit. A tiny, stony crack of a room barely carved out enough to allow them to stand up. He made another noise of warning when she tried to fit herself between him and the sink and she backed off, let him stand there with his head bowed under his own power.

 

He swayed gently in place, leaned his hip against the edge of the sink and began a careful, minute shuffle to face the bowl.

 

Furiosa snorted and shook her head; “If you fall over don’t expect me to feel sorry for you,” And she backed out, pulled the curtain closed with a snap.

 

He felt momentarily triumphant, let the sheet sag open and braced his right hand against the wall, hunched forward an inch at a time and managed to catch the edge of the seat and pry it up before the pressure on his belly became unbearable, walked his hands up the wall to right himself and stood there on trembling legs for a few seconds before even deciding an attempt was worth the risk.

 

The bulb above his head buzzed ominously, like some extinct insect, and he rubbed the back of his neck. Right, he could do this… It was nothing, he’d been doing it his whole life. Pissed in the sand, pissed off a cliff—pissed in the ocean once—and in a pot of sand between Furiosa’s feet, this was nothing.

 

He spread his fingers against the wall, curled them to try and grip at the stone and let his eyes flutter shut, thought maybe it was louder than necessary and why the shit was he self-conscious about how loud it was.

 

It felt satisfying, upright and alone, even his kidneys had stopped aching. It was still dark, but not so bad that it had him worried. Took him a long moment to find the latch to clear the bowl, and another to realize he’d locked his knees and couldn’t rock back onto his heels without his legs giving out.

 

“Max?”

 

He grunted.

 

“You good?”

 

He didn’t answer, didn’t know how exactly because, yes, he was OK, he’d just made a dumb mistake and instead of keeping his stupid left knee flexed, had straightened it and—

 

The curtain shifted and Furiosa peered in, voice dropped to almost a whisper; “Are you OK?”

 

He nodded; “Bad leg’s locked on me.”

 

She nodded, sidestepped into the room and hooked her metal arm around his waist, took enough of his weight that he could shift upright and take the pressure off his knee. “I’ll get the brace once you’re clean.”

 

He nodded, tried to tug the sheet closed up front but it was caught between his hip and Furiosa’s and it felt WRONG to step out of the alcove exposed like this, had to hold the sheet over instead of putting counter pressure on his wound and limped pathetically out. He could feel Toast side eyeing him and tried not to look up, thought maybe if he didn’t acknowledge it, he could pretend it hadn’t happened.

 

The stairs—Now those were tricky. Furiosa went up first, then came back down, wound up nearly lifting him quickly over them and they shuffled into the room, curtain swinging shut behind them.

 

Max didn’t think he’d ever be grateful to see that damned bed again, but he was. His legs were shaking and a chill was prickling his skin. He eyed the mattress, noticed the two beds had been separated again, the smaller of the two pushed against the wall by the desk, the larger pulled away from the wall a good portion, almost back into the middle of the room, though he had no idea why.  

 

He saw the chair next, settled inside the tub with a gray, stained scrap of cloth spread over the seat, and a deep basin on the desk gently wafting steam.

 

Oh, boy… His shoulders sagged and part of him wanted to fight for the sheet to keep himself covered, but his strength was waning and he thought it would be best to just get it over with as quickly as possible. Besides, it wasn’t like it was going to hurt… it was just—just going to be unpleasant letting someone TOUCH him. He didn’t like people touching him. Even the contact of Furiosa moving him to and fro, or helping him sit up sometimes caused a prickle of unease to rise under his skin.

 

“Mari said not to get your wound wet, but the binding could be changed,” She nodded to the linens on the desk and cupped her metal hand against his elbow, held most of his weight with her feet braced shoulder width apart as he eased down onto the chair, swung his feet into the tub and finally relinquished the sheet.

 

He tried to cover his genitals with his palms, looked away, but after a moment realized that it was kind of pointless considering what they were doing and rubbed at the scarred lump of his knee instead

 

Furiosa nudged his arm and plucked the short ends of each slip knot, watched his body straighten as the binding was removed and nudged his hand to cover the bandages as she unwound it from him.

 

His skin was creased because of it, lines above each hip and his waist, curls of bloodless flesh where the knots had pressed. She could see the rough weave of the gauze molded into his skin like steel, pressed him back with her warm right hand and peeled it all away from the wound. Hummed encouragingly; “It looks better. No fresh bleeding. Stitches still look tight,” She rocked upward and away went to the desk and carefully uncovered the prepared bandage Mari had sent with Cheedo. It was a thicker fabric, but there was less of it than the other, she touched only the edges away from the pristine center of the pad, pressed it to the wound and guided his fingers to hold it while she wound clean strips around him to keep it in place. “Better?”

 

He inhaled slowly, hands braced on his knees, exhaled and inhaled again. He nodded, seemed to relax a little, shifted his weight more onto his left hip.

 

Without the binding Furiosa could see a pale irregular line across his stomach where Mari had scrubbed him clean and scraped away the hair. It was almost funny how some of the brown of his skin was nothing but sweat and grime. It was like Bean or Blossom, laughing when what was thought to be a tan turned out to be only dirt. 

 

He wouldn’t meet her eyes, which she supposed made this easier, it didn't seem personal if she didn't have to see the discomfort and awareness in his eyes, and went to the desk, fished the cloth out of the water and rubbed it on the soap. She held it out to him with lifted brows; “Face first. I think you can manage that,” She peeled another cloth off the pile, wet and soaped it and went for the back of his neck. Scoured the flesh almost roughly to cut through the layers of filth.

 

He shivered, made a startled low sound in his throat but didn’t strike out, let her scrub his shoulders and as far down his spine as the chair allowed, kept the cloth he’d been given pressed over his face and practically arched into the pressure of her hand.

 

Her eyes narrowed; “Is it too hot?”

 

He shook his head minutely. The last person to touch his back had left him with hateful words etched into his skin, but she didn’t seem to care, swiped the cloth up and down outward from his spine over them and she might as well have been kneading the muscles for how good it felt. It nearly brought him to tears how perplexingly nice it felt to just be touched with innocent kindness.

 

“Are you OK?”

 

He nodded, tried to remain detached but it pulled at something in his chest he'd thought long dead and burned. Something soft and scarred over sharp edges. He swallowed with a measure of difficulty and rubbed harder at his cheeks and eyelids.

 

She worked down his back, circled to the front and pulled his head against her abdomen, worked lower to the dimples of his hips, rinsed the cloth in the pail of cold water and went back for more hot and soap, shook her head in dismay when she felt his throat bob desperately against her stomach and a damp warm patch growing from the wetness left by the cloth. She pushed him back in the seat, “Are you really just going to sit there and make me do this myself?”

 

He seemed to shake himself a little, eyes distant, draped the soiled face cloth across his lap for modesty and took another one when she offered it. He set to rubbing his chest and the exposed skin above his bandages with a single minded purpose, exposed more and more clean skin.

 

Capable came looking for Toast a bit later, while Max was rubbing soap into the hair under his arms, and the girls left without so much as a peek. He relaxed a little more after that, didn’t argue when Furiosa bent to scrub his calves. She counted small little scars on his legs amid the pale fuzz. This one a thick scooped line from a bullet pass, that one from a knife. This one on his inner calf a burn, likely from a motorcycle's exhaust. There was one on top of his right foot and a mirror on the bottom, he'd stepped on something long ago. There were tiny dots on either side of the wound, stitches. He suddenly curled his toes into his foot and made a high sound of threat when she swiped the cloth against his instep. Pulled the limb back and sat it in the little puddle growing at the bottom of the tub.

 

She felt her lips curl up and did the other foot and leg just as quickly, spread a towel across the floor by the bed and helped him to sit.

 

“Just lie back, your hair’s still filthy,” She left him with a final cloth and a purposeful motion to his genitals with her metal hand, caught the handles of the tub, hefted it out of the room. Spaz was outside the vault door, darted in to help her carry it out to the stairs and dump it down a collection pipe that fed the water by gravity to the little plants rooted on ledges impossible to access unless by rope and tether. They left the tub overturned against the wall just inside the stone hallway and Furiosa nodded her thanks and went back inside.

 

Max was sprawled out over the bed, sheet drawn over his lap, soiled rag tossed in the direction of the pail with the others, but it hadn't quite made it, though she wouldn't tell him so. His hands were folded on his chest, fingers tapping. He opened one eye when she came back into the room and scuffed his heels against the towel as if asking what she wanted him to do now.

 

If it hadn’t been for the lingering pallor of his cheeks and the bandages wound around his lower belly, Furiosa could have believed he was perfectly healthy, perhaps lounging around waiting for an intended bed partner.

 

He wasn’t bad to look at, she knew that. He was well proportioned, more or less healthy and most of his bones were still straight and solid. He was only missing two teeth, far back on either side of his lower jaw, and those looked to have been pulled, not rotted away, the gum in the gaps healthy.

 

His eyes met hers and his brows lifted in question.

 

She shook her head and caught the chair, hefted it to the other side of the bed near his head and went back for the basin of water, towels and soap.

 

“I can help,” He said, but the heavy look of his lids proclaimed him a liar.

 

She settled on the chair, basin between her feet and stuffed a thick padding of towels under his head and shoulders bent and soaked the cloth. She guided his head backward, dribbled the water over his scalp and worked it into the hair with her knuckles. She kept her metal hand folded over her knees, away from the water, and worked until his whole scalp was wet and felt cold as the heat left. The soap was gummy from sitting in the water so long and she scooped some away and began scratching it through his hair with rigid fingers, went back for more and continued until the oil and dirt had killed the sparse bubbles and then collected the cloth again, squeezed and rinsed and went for more soap. Now that most of the filth was gone she pulled the top most towel away, nose wrinkled at the brown and black smears across the once pale cloth and sat back to work. Wet and scrubscrubscrub.

 

It wasn’t until she saw his eyes rolling slowly back into his head that she thought something may be wrong, but the upward tilt of his brows and lips didn’t indicate pain or distress. His head lolled limply with her scrubbing and she felt herself grinning, amused that he just gave himself over to it—glanced down the length of his body cautiously but he only seemed minimally interested. She flicked her eyes skyward, grateful at least that the blood loss kept them both from that humiliation.

 

“Max?”

 

“Hn?” His brows lifted but his eyes didn’t open.

 

“Do you want your beard cut?”

 

His brows pulled down, “Hn.”

 

“You want to do it later?”

 

Brows up again, “Mhn.”

 

His tongue flicked over his lips and they didn’t quite close when it retreated body gone lax and supple. She stared. Didn’t even try to stop herself. If she’d been a weaker person she might have leaned forward and captured them, let him breathe through her again because there had been something too intimate about it—perhaps tried to breathe through him instead.

 

But she wasn’t, and anyway even if she was and had, the only breath coming in or out of him was soft snores.

 

She rocked upright with a self-conscious tightening of her jaw and pulled the towels from under his head, rubbed his hair dry with the less damp of the three, a bit more vigorously than was strictly necessary and woke him with a jerk and a swing of his fist.

 

He scowled, seemed more embarrassed than angry and let her heft him upward again and push the smaller bed back into place. He eased himself back with a wordless grumble and pulled the blankets up to his red ears when she tugged it within reach.

 

Furiosa pursed her lips and left the room with the basin and pail of dirty water to spill down the collection drain in the other room.

 

She didn’t look back.

 

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	8. A Steady Decline

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Furiosa didn’t go back to the vault until well after dark and then it was because Mari cornered her in line at the kitchens and berated her about it.

 

“You can’t just leave him alone! What if he tries to get up and splits himself open like a tomato! You took control of his care, you have to stay on top of it!”

 

Furiosa wondered, absently when she’d claimed this formal ‘Control’ of his care, because she certainly didn’t remember it. She should be out there DOING things. There were engines to maintain, training sessions to oversee, patrols to run. She didn’t even really know what day of the trade cycle it was—Toast would know, she had this strange ability to memorize things by only seeing them once— But Toast wasn’t in the kitchen hall. Was likely down in the Steel Works under the garages with her designs seeing if one of the boys down there would lend his stronger hands to help bend this, or cut that.

 

“Well, are you going back or do I have to go myself!” Mari crossed her arms over her chest.

 

No, no. That wouldn’t do. There were two women now up on the Wards waiting to give birth, and there were Boys with lumps waiting for excisions. Someone was always getting burned, or cut, or bruised and coming to Mari. Almost eager to see the Healer or her Studies where Before they’d fought tooth and nail to avoid the Organic.

 

“Well?” Mari said testily.

 

Some of the Boys and even some of the women huddled around a few tables in the corners eyed her with mischievous grins on their faces.

 

Furiosa got her food—a mug of sugar solution for Max—and some slimy, oily looking tonic to help his bowels move.

 

“Tonic first or he won’t drink it—All of it, mind.”

 

Furiosa muttered to herself the whole walk back. Mugs and bowls balanced on a tray.

 

Max was more or less where she’d left him. Awake, but hadn’t been for long from the still dazed look in his eyes. He had his right arm and the cushion held protectively to his belly and his face was scrunched. She wondered if the Fool’s Weed was wearing off, she couldn’t even really smell it in the air anymore.

 

The pipe was in the tin cup on the desk, and it took her a moment to pack more of the shredded herb into the bowl and light it. Managed not to cough as she handed it quickly over.

 

He held it gingerly, as if the very thought of it still bothered him on some level. ‘Illegal,’ he’d said. What did that even mean?

 

He handed it back when the fire went out of it after the second or third inhale, held the smoke in his lungs until he couldn’t take it anymore and coughed it out, shook his head and blinked choked tears from his eyes.

 

Furiosa tried to hand him the tonic and he very nearly spilled it on himself. “It was your gut she sliced into, why are your arms weak?”

 

He scowled and turned his face away from the mug like a petulant child.

 

“Max.”

 

His eyes went to the walls, found the edges of the window.

 

“You stubborn fool, drink this or I’ll pinch your nose until you can’t breathe and pour it down your throathole!”

 

He flinched, turned toward her with an eyebrow lifted—And made the strangest noise she’d ever heard.

 

Her brows lifted in shock.

 

The noise came again, choked—like tires on the last road, or gears grinding in the rig under an unskilled hand. It changed and his face contorted, the sound now choppy, spluttering and his face—

 

Lips pressed tightly together, cheeks pink, eyes shining—

 

The damned fool was laughing at her!

 

She was too startled to be angry, or even shocked. His face—

 

The little lines at the edges of his eyes pulled together, the flesh over his cheekbones lifted, plush lips curving up— It came out thin and crackled, like he didn’t quite remember how, then his face pinched, “Oh—OH, don’t do—“ He wrapped his arms around his middle, face still pink and pinched and amused; “Don’t make me laugh,” It was somewhere between humor and pain and she hadn’t ever heard him make a sound like that before. Giggling and whining and holding his gut with tears of mirth in his eyes.

 

“Are you going to open your mouth now?”

 

He hunched his shoulders, somehow shy—She imagined him hiding his face like Bean and Blossom did and felt a warm twinge in her cheeks, muscles long unused tightening.

 

“Max,” She pulled her brows down and shook her head with a sigh when he relented and took the mug, cradled it carefully in both hands, the fingers of his scarred left sliding through the metal loop of its handle.

 

He drank slowly, between giggles and whines of pain, gave up and pressed his right hand to his stomach, had to balance the edge of the mug against his lower lip to keep from spilling it between the laughter and juddering ‘oww—heehee—ohhhh’.

 

She had to turn away and smother her own amusement, wasn’t quite quiet enough—

 

“’s not funny—hurts!”

 

And that just made it worse. She shook her head and took a deep breath, “Just drink.”

 

He shook his head, nose wrinkled; “This tastes awful,” Tried to hand it back but she only glared at him.

 

“You have to drink it all. It’s to help your bowels.”

 

He hesitated, stared down at the contents and went slightly green, but tilted the mug to his lips again, swallowed it quickly and thrust the empty mug toward Furiosa with a sick shudder and a scrape of his wide tongue against the points of his teeth. He shivered again.

 

Furiosa poured two fingers of water into the bottom of the mug and swilled the dregs about then handed it back; “All of it.”

 

He whined, leaned away in a pathetic attempt of resistance but when she pushed the mug up under his nose he growled low in his throat and took it, choked it down and curled his face in disgust.

 

She patted his head like a child and held out the mug of sugar solution, had to control most of its weight because the mug was larger than the last and she didn’t like the way his hands were shaking.

 

Her food was cool by the time he was finished and spooning the mushy pieces of fruit and boiled kale between his lips, he found a particularly tough piece of kale and took a while to work it between his teeth, eyes on her as she shoveled the oat and honeyed apple mixture into her own mouth.

 

She went out again when she was finished eating and brought his knee brace in, let him inspect the work Capable and Toast had done on it, work the hinges between his fingers. Saw him tick his brows up and lips down in surprised approval.

 

Mari came in about an hour later. Max was in a half doze flexing the fingers of his right hand against his stomach. A sleepy approximation of the massage Furiosa had noticed he’d committed himself to with the kind of silent determination she’d seen that night in the Once Green Place when he’d disappeared into the foul mist to stop their pursuers.

 

Mari said nothing when she entered, just peeked her head into the room and peered at them critically for a heartbeat before she came fully into the room.

 

Max cracked his eyes open and blinked at her owlishly, the food in his stomach and the Fool’s Weed slowing him just enough that he couldn’t be bothered to worry over her sudden appearance. She had no weapons save the cold bell of a listening horn, and that was not a real threat—Why work himself up over it when his muscles felt so blessedly soft and warm.

 

“And how are you feeling this evening?” Mari was strangely formal.

 

He stifled a yawn into the palm of his crooked left hand.

 

“I’d like to have a listen if you’re up to it?” She twirled the horn between her fingers.

 

He didn’t say anything, but shifted his hands away from his middle—kept a firm grip on the sheet even with his hips however. Furiosa snorted and turned back to her book.

 

Mari shuffled the blankets around and bent forward with the horn pressed to his belly, moved it left and right, up and down from below his ribs almost to his groin. She rose up again with a hum—a sound that pulled Furiosa’s attention away from the words on the page.

 

“You be alright alone for a bit?” Mari pulled the blankets back up to his chest.

 

He nodded with a grunt and let his eyes close, scratched blunt stained nails against his jaw and was still.

 

Mari lifted her chin in Furiosa’s direction and flicked her eyes toward the door.

 

Something cold settled in Furiosa’s middle but she said nothing until they were out under the clattering hydroponics beds. “What’s wrong?”

 

“I don’t like how quiet his insides are… There should be some type of sound by now. A gurgle—anything.”

 

Her heart skipped a beat.

 

“We need to get him up and moving. That should start things to rumbling again, but if it doesn’t then something’s wrong… Has he seemed like he’s in pain at all? Around the wound?”

 

Furiosa’s mouth opened and closed. “I thought that was normal.”

 

“Tenderness is normal, itching—but it shouldn’t still hurt, it’s healing. The nerves we damaged are closed off—The WOUND shouldn’t hurt…” She tugged the end of her braid and brushed the tuft of hair at the end over her lips; “The gut—When you’re doing things to it like I did to him—If it’s out in the air too long it’ll dry out and die… If—If that happened we’ll have to go back in and take out the dead bits. It’s dangerous—the bowel could leak and if that happens there isn’t anything we could do.”

 

Furiosa nodded, insides chilled.

 

“I don’t think that’s what’s wrong. He’s not all stiff,” She motioned to her stomach, “Bowel death is painful—worse than what he was having before. If it was that, you’d know.”

 

“Then what is it?”

 

“Could be he’s just slow—Or his intestines are stuck. We can’t know until we get him up and moving… You did earlier—he doesn’t stink anymore, good for that. But he needs to move—Not too much, he could still split himself open. But Around the room a few times won’t hurt.”

 

Furiosa nodded, shifted to the side and watched Mari pad toward the hall; “He’ll need pants,” She called out.

 

Mari’s brows scrunched; “Why? He’s convalescing. Don’t need pants when you’re a convalid.”

 

“And if he falls over the edge of the sheet and splits himself?”

 

“Why’s he walking around with the sheet on—“

 

“He’s modest. He—“ She didn’t know truly. Didn’t have a word to describe why it felt wrong to make him go uncovered. Why did it matter? The men and boys in the Citadel didn’t have any such reservations—or they didn’t used to. Since the stories of The Fool had begun filtering around she’d witnessed a change, boys and men who took care to cover themselves at all times, who averted their eyes when they came upon women in the lower level baths—Men who asked instead of insisting… Wanting to earn the attention of the Sisters and Mothers and Ladies of the Citadel instead of taking it.

 

Mari’s tongue worked the inside of her cheek, eyes thoughtful; “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

Max was snoring when Furiosa returned. She stood over him for a moment just staring. The fan of his lashes on his cheeks, the fading pallor. Dark blonde, she decided, noting the ridiculous tuft of hair on the back of his head, above the crimps left from the pillows. It fell across his brow and stood out near his ears and crown. Sun bleached and softened by the washing. Clean hair and skin bundled loosely in blankets. It was a complete one-eighty from when he’d been brought in after the cutting. There was a living tension in his muscles, a softness without pain. Furiosa eased her hip onto the edge of the bed by his hand.

 

He flinched, seemed to sense her proximity and rubbed the side of his left hand against his eye, scowled at her for a moment until he was fully awake once more.

 

They stared at one another for heartbeats too long, so long Max’s lips pinched self-consciously, but he didn’t look away, met her evenly, curious.

 

She wanted to say something, because just sitting there staring at him was building a bridge of tension between them, but she couldn’t. The words just wouldn’t come out. And even if she did speak the words weren’t enough.

 

She could still lose him. Even while he sat there, healing, looking healthier by far than he had only yesterday… He could still die.

 

“When she took it out of you I looked at it… The—uh—“ She scrunched her brow in thought, “The appendesite… When she took it out it…”

 

He shifted his shoulders, not uncomfortably, but as if settling down to listen to a long tale, eyes concerned.

 

“It looked awful… Infected, but it hadn’t ruptured. It didn’t leak.”

 

He seemed relieved.

 

“It was hiding inside you, behind your cecum—“ She would never forget that word, the sneer of Mari’s voice as she lifted it out.

 

“She got it,” His voice was even, gentle, more so than she’d ever heard it.

 

Furiosa nodded, breathed in and out to push down the fear, eyes falling to his scarred left hand as a distraction. The line across his last two knuckles, gnarled scar tissue. She knew if she were to take his hand and turn it over there would be a jagged curved line from between his last two fingers, curling around the side of his hand. He’d nearly lost half of it, ripped clean away, cut to the bone. But the chain— Angharad and the girls.

 

She remembered the whine in his voice when he’d been trapped, how close it was to the sounds he’d made in this very room. How he’d shaken once the wheel and harpoon had dropped free, breath quick and uneven. The scars were thick with small, uneven dots to either side where it had been roughly stitched. Something he’d done himself from the appearance of it.

 

She glanced to his stomach, could feel the presence of the wound beneath the bandages. The steady, even line of stitches. She wondered what kind of scar it would leave. Thick like the ones on his hand, or thin like the one on his foot. Wondered if the silence in his belly would claim him before it even became one.

 

He turned his palm upward and it was only then she realized she had her fingers on his wrist, tracing the lines of his veins up his arm. Felt the soft tapping of his pulse against her fingertips; “You came back.”

 

He hummed, a soft rumbling sound, like a distant engine.

 

“You came back here to die—” She looked at him accusingly. “Why?”

 

He inhaled deeply—no crackling, no sound of pain, tilted his head against his shoulder to gaze at her from the edges of his eyes. “You gave me a bike.”

 

“And you stole another one,” There was no malice behind it.

 

He inhaled, nodded, turned his head the other way so her hand could fit into the notch of his jaw and continue counting the beats of his heart; “Suppose I could trade for it?” His fingers twitched.

 

“What do you have worth trading?” Her fingers were on his cheek now, following the path of a scar into his hair, a little divot in the crest of his left ear.

 

His right hand lifted motioned vaguely at his chest, “When I’m done with it.”

 

She stared at him, curled her fingers back into her palm and lowered it, pulled at the straps on her prosthetic because her fingertips still held the phantom rhythm of his pulse.

 

“For the plants.”

 

She wanted to hit him. Cram a pillow over his face and pin him down until he stopped squirming. “You can’t do that, not if you may not be here when it’s time to collect.”

 

He turned his hand, butted his knuckles up against her knee, tugged carefully on a loose thread. His brows knitted, silent, deep thought, but he said nothing else.

 

0-0-0

 

Furiosa didn’t sleep. She watched him—supposed he didn’t sleep well either because his head shifted on the pillow often and his legs flexed beneath the blankets restlessly. He gave up the pretense close to dawn and laid there silently, staring at the window and running his hand in its circuit over his stomach.

 

It was Dag, not Mari who brought up trousers. Oversized brown linen things with a draw string. Her children followed behind Blossom had her hair in braids and each of them were wearing small aprons with deep pockets on the front.

 

Dag eyed Max warily, chin lifted, spotted the chamomile flowers hanging upside down from the bedpost and grinned, pleased. “Mari said you’re to get up and moving today. If you can you should come up and see the garden. The Sprouts are having their first harvest.”

 

“’s our Givin’ Day!” Bean grinned with a mouthful of small teeth; “Gonna get muh LEEF!” He prodded himself forcefully on his little collarbone, chest puffed out.

 

Furiosa’s mouth compressed, withholding laughter, and she nodded; “Very good.”

 

“They planted and cared for the squash all on their own… Got nine of ‘em!” Dag ruffled the boy’s hair. “And Blossom’s maize is doing lovely, not long until her day.”

 

The little girl wrapped her arm around Dag’s long thin leg and grinned broadly, nose crinkled. She giggled and hid her face when Max looked at her.

 

Dag rolled her eyes and nudged them out of the room; “Go water the roses, they’re thirsty—Haven’t seen you two in days!”

 

“Yes, Mama,” And they darted away. Max could hear their feet slapping against the floor of the vault and down the stairs toward the lower level.

 

“Right, better be quick with this,” She held out the trousers and jerked her chin toward Furiosa, “Can you get him on his feet?”

 

Furiosa nodded and moved quickly. Tried to ignore the uncomfortable pinch of Max’s face as the blankets were pulled back and he was levered up to sit on the edge of the bed.

 

Dag was merciless, crouched and fitted his feet into the leg holes of the trousers, pushed them up to his knees. Neither of them seemed fazed by his nudity and he tried to ignore it, the thought of having trousers on again outweighing the discomfort.

 

There was loud giggling and shrieks of the children in the garden, the soft splashing of water and the dull sound of a watering can against the side of the downstairs fountain.

 

Furiosa gripped his hips again, and he hissed, tried to lean away;

 

“Cold—hand’s cold!”

 

Dag snorted.

 

It wasn’t as dizzying to be pulled to his feet this time. He knew what to expect, leaned heavily against her shoulder with his head bowed and let Dag pull the trousers up, only reached to hold them once they were around his hips. Pulled the strings until they didn’t threaten to fall because of the abundance of fabric and tied them loosely to hang low on his hips beneath the bandages.

 

They were a good hand too short, but they covered him, didn’t bind between his legs or around them. Stayed clear of his feet so there wasn’t the threat of tripping on them. He sagged a little in relief.

 

Dag patted his shoulder and met Furiosa’s eyes over the top of his bowed head. Narrowed her eyes knowingly and left the room, white hair swishing in its braid behind her. “Are you two playing in the water?”

 

“Nooo,” The slap of wet feet up the stairs.

 

“Watering yourselves won’t make you grow,” Dag said with amusement in her voice; “That takes food and hard work… Out, c’mon. Go, he can’t rest with you running around—“

 

They darted away laughing and screaming in delight.

 

Max lifted his head slowly, placed one palm, then the other on Furiosa’s shoulders and gently—almost fearfully—released, stood there under his own power, swaying only slightly. “Brace?”

 

She nodded, touched his elbow to ensure his stability then turned to fetch it, yanked the chair over for him to balance against while she fitted the brace around his leg, asked “Good?” and repositioned it when he grunted and shook his head. “Now?”

 

“Little higher,” He nodded once she’d placed it over the billowing leg of the trousers and grunted in encouragement as the belts and buckles were tightened. Gingerly sat his foot down and let it take his weight. It didn’t click when he stood free, didn’t make that hushed rasping sound of sand caught in hinges. Moved almost as freely as a healthy joint save the clicking and popping of his bones.

 

“Good?” Furiosa said one last time, pushed herself to her feet and cupped he right hand to his elbow.

 

“Good.”

 

He gripped the back of the chair and took a hesitant step forward, right against his stomach. Bunched his face in concentration and tried a second. His hand lifted away from the chair back and Furiosa caught it, laced her fingers with his and hovered her metal hand at his waist, ready to grip if he started to fall.

 

It was slow progress. Unbelievably slow, but he made it to the end of the passageway, blinking out at the wet footprints Blossom and Bean had left along the ground, then up to the crack of the water closet, grunted and tilted his head toward it, then focused on the two steps he had to descend to reach it.

 

Furiosa opened her mouth to suggest she go first, but he’d already lowered his right foot and was swinging his left to the ground.

 

He made a sound of triumph in his sinuses and moved a little faster lifted his hand from hers and disappeared into the water closet alone.

 

Furiosa stood there and tried not to listen, flinched at the clack of the toilet seat dropping, heard him discover the soap from his washing on the edge of the sink and waited for him to emerge.

 

They make three circuits of the main level. Each one slower than the last until Max has to stop with a shake of his head and a hand pressed hard into his belly, little beads of sweat on his brow and chest.

 

Furiosa pulls a chair out of Toast’s workshop and eases him into it. Lets him tilt into her ribcage and catch his breath. “Does it hurt?”

 

He hesitates, doesn’t really speak but lifts his left hand, fingers curled and flinching.

 

She nods, knows the agony of torn muscles spasming. Settles in to wait it out. It takes a long while. Long enough that she’s starting to worry.

 

When he nods she bends to lift him again but he growls and shakes his head, gives her false hand a bitter look and she remembers the sharp edges, mutters an apology and settles that hand on his side instead. Hefts him up one handed and feels his legs trembling as he helps.

 

Spaz is standing in the door when she turns, holding another short mug of tonic.

 

Max rolls his nose at it downs it quickly when she gives him a threatening look and shivers all over—fights down a gag and thrusts the cup back into Spaz’s long thing hands.

 

It’s not until, barely a dozen steps later that he stops dead, tilts his face upward and starts swallowing quickly, that she thinks something may be wrong. Furiosa turns to the boy sitting outside the vault and snaps her fingers; “Water—Get him some water.”

 

Spaz jumps to his feet, limps toward the spigot on the wall of the hydroponics room and fills the mug, brings it back trying not to spill.

 

He refuses it—takes one look and slams his eyes closed, face up, swallowing swallowing—He breathes through flared nostrils and it takes almost a full hundred heartbeats before he takes the mug and downs it, shivers and says, “Awful,” as if he may bend forward and empty his stomach then and there.

 

Spaz has to help heft him up the stairs, Max is stubborn and weak and snarls, but keeps his eyes averted, seems to melt back against the bed.

 

Furiosa reaches for his knee brace but he grunts, says; “Leave it,” In a sigh, “’ll try again,” he swallows.

 

“Don’t push yourself. You’ve been more active today than the last four days combined.”

 

He huffs, trembles a little and makes a long slow pass with his hand around his stomach, brows scrunched.

 

“Do you feel something?”

 

He hesitates, thinking, and shakes his head; “Feels tight.”

 

She shifted, eased down to sit on the edge of the bed, presses her fingers into his stomach. She could feel his muscles bunch in discomfort, how tightly he’s clenched himself trying to combat the pain. “Try to rest for a little bit, then we'll go again," She pressed in with the flat of her palm, made a slow curling sweep like she’d seen Mari do.

 

He nodded, curled a hand against his right hip—purposefully trying to stay away from the bandages, away from the wound and the general vicinity of his middle, slung the other arm up over his face, then after the third or so pass of Furiosa’s hand, dropped it onto her knee.

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0


	9. He Let the Sands Reclaim Him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deals with bodily functions!

NINE;

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

She gets him to make two more slow shuffling laps of the room before he shakes his head. He can’t even lift his foot high enough to try and make the steps back into the sick room.

 

Spaz and Toast help get him back into the bed. He’s shivering visibly and pale about his face and mouth.

 

“Do you need help with him?” Toast is staring at the weak flex of his hands on his belly, the way his head has flopped back against Furiosa’s shoulder as she holds him up for water.

 

She wants to say ‘no’ some prideful part insists she can take care of it because there’s nothing wrong. He’s fine. He’s just fine! But the logical part of her says ‘yes’. That something isn’t right. Furiosa inhales and lets it out, nods her chin toward his feet; “Leave the brace for now… The blanket. There’s another on the bench by the stairs.”

 

Spaz goes to fetch the blanket off the bench, Toast draws the sheet up over Max, seems as if she wants to tuck it around him but restrains herself, waits and spreads out the blanket Spaz brings. Settles her hip by Max’s feet and waits for instruction.

 

Max doesn’t drink much, turns his face away with a sound like a moan and curls himself into Furiosa’s chest, teeth grit.

 

“Just rest,” Furiosa speaks into his hair, passes her hand over his head and after a moment shifts her arm and starts plucking the buckles and closures of her harness, sheds the arm and settles it carefully on the chair by the bed. She swings herself onto the mattress beside him, accepts the hard bow of his body against her own and wraps both arms around his shoulders. She motions with her stump toward the desk and Spaz practically leaps forward, snatches up the tin cup and hands it over.

 

“Needs lit,” Furiosa says pointing toward the lamp on the wall.

 

Spaz sets a knee on the edge of the desk and hefts himself up to the flame, brings the pipe over coughing smoke with tears in his eyes.

 

Max doesn’t even hesitate, takes it with shaking hands and holds the first lungful for a long while, takes a second, a third and fourth before the fire goes out and he passes it back firmly, body still tense.

 

Toast pulls one of the buds apart when prompted and stuffs it into the pipe, stands staring curiously at the sticky residue on her fingertips as it’s lit and passed back to Max.

 

“Why’s it sticky?” Toast presses her fingers together and pulls them apart. She rubbed them on her trousers and wrinkled her nose.

 

“It’s like juice I think,” Spaz says slowly; “Like the ploppers’s got sweet juice. Juice of this stuff makes everythin’ real shine…” He hummed curiously; “Helps knock out the pain too, or Banka says… Stops bad dreams,” He rubbed his nose and mouth, “Smells funny like—He’s sure had a lot, is he OK?”

 

The fire’s gone out of the herb again but Max is still holding the stem of the pipe between his teeth, face scrunched in discomfort. He blinks at them slowly, passes it back and curls his arms around his stomach.

 

“Are you OK?” Furiosa runs her hand over his hair again.

 

He tilts his head into it but says nothing.

 

Toast’s expression is unreadable, but her hands are clenched into fists in the fabric of her trousers. She disappears into her workshop and Spaz takes up residence in the hall, hums softly and sharpens his boot knife, scratches a little leaf on the back edge of his hand, and a bit of vine curling toward the joint of his small finger. It’s not deep, just enough to leave a scored line, enough to see and think about before he has it cut into place.

 

They stay close, eyes flicking toward the sick room frequently, every little sound putting them on edge.

 

Furiosa stays in the bed with Max held to her chest for a long while. Listens to his breathing, shallow and quick. Even as the Fool’s Weed makes him sleep he remains tense. She doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like it at all. She slips out of the bed just as the sun through the tiny window is turning purple-red and goes down stairs for food, eats while she waits for Max’s food, a tomato roll with goat cheese baked in, flat and about the size of her hand. Max has another mug of tonic and a thin soup with small chunks of potato in it. It doesn’t smell as good as the sugar solution, but she doesn’t doubt the fact it is something he needs. Fats from the goat butter and milk, proteins.

 

Spaz isn’t in the hall when she gets back, and she can hear a strange noise coming from the vault. Low and animal—

 

“He’s coming—he’s gone for help, it’s OK!” Toast’s voice—

 

Furiosa drops the tray, hears the mugs clank and spill on the ground—

 

Max is in the floor on his knees, right arm around his belly, left braced on the edge of the bed, body arched over the sand pot. The room smells sour.

 

Toast is bent over his back, hands supporting his head, her eyes are wide; “Help—He—HELP.”

 

Max heaves again and Furiosa is suddenly beside him, heart too fast in her chest, vision sharp and filled with him. He’s sweating profusely, skin an ashy grey color and there’s sick in the hair on his chin. He—or Toast—has had enough sense to press the round cushion over his middle for him to hold on to but Furiosa is near mindless. His stitches—What if he’s split himself open!

 

His body rocks forward and back, something mindless in an attempt to soothe himself, he reaches for her with his left hand, clings, says nothing. Makes a keening sound and rams his head into Furiosa’s chest a little more roughly than he had intended. He’s shaking, from sickness or pain or what she doesn’t know, remembers what Mari had said about bowel death.

 

You’ll know.

 

You’ll know.

 

Furiosa looks up at Toast urgently; “Go get Mari.”

 

“Already done, she’ll be here any minute.”

 

Furiosa feels each heartbeat like an eternity. The rasp of Max’s breath and wet sounds as he snuffs and spits and gags. The low noises of his pain—

 

This is bad. This is BAD.

 

Furiosa hears her coming, the loud slap of feet on the floor and she grips Max tighter; “She’s coming, just hold on.”

 

Mari seems to explode into the room a few breaths later, eyes wide wearing only a thin top and her trousers. Her hair is twisted up on top of her head and there’s a belt of pockets around her waist filled with odds and ends, tongue depressors, swabs, little bits of gauze and a metal flask of strong alcohol she uses to clean wounds. She doesn’t even hesitate, just comes straight toward them. “When did it start?” She bends over him, presses fingertips into the notch of his throat for his pulse, flattens the other hand on his chest, slides it down to his stomach.

 

He arches away from the contact with a whine.

 

“About ten minutes ago—“ Toast says, “It felt off—something felt wrong and when I came in he was lying there curled up around his stomach and he was really pale and sweaty. I sent Spazums after you.”

 

“Good girl,” Mari hums, tries to wedge him upright to get to his stomach but he’s having none of it. Growls and snarls at her like an angry dog.

 

“Snapping your teeth at me won’t make it hurt any less,” Mari said with a snarl of her own. “Lean up a minute,” She contorts herself, wedges her head under his arm and presses her bare ear to his middle, pulls back quickly and snaps her fingers in Toast’s direction, eyes hard; “Go get Moira, tell her to bring about three feet of tubing and one of those camel bags,” She turns to Spaz; “Towels… Cloth—CLEAN CLOTH!” He’s already darting away.

 

Max heaves again, an unproductive belching sound and spits weakly toward the sand, sways forward with his brow against Furiosa’s shoulder, fingers twitching helplessly against her bicep.

 

“What’s wrong with him?” Furiosa feels a tremor in her voice. Feels it running through her bones.

 

“Nothing’s moving. It’s backing up in there… Called an obstruction when it happens. Like when the rocks dropped in the canyon.”

 

“Is it bad?”

 

“It can be if it’s not handled right. Help me get him up.”

 

Max’s legs don’t want to cooperate, he sags between them and Mari braces a hand over his wound, shuffles them around and gets Max on the bed, pries up the edge of the bandages and peers below them, mutters a quick thanks and presses her fist up from her brow. “He’s not split himself—“ She moves about, pulls the pillows from beneath his head and shoves the blankets away. She bends over his stomach again and presses her ear to his flesh. Shifts a bit and listens, shifts some more, listens. “That’s what I was afraid of,” She sighs and shakes her head.

 

Furiosa swallows the burn of gall in her throat; “What is it?”

 

“Shush!” She shifts around puts her hands to her head and stands there staring for all of fifteen heartbeats, thinking with her eyes wide open.

 

Furiosa stared back, kept her hand tight over Max’s own, tried to push down the urge to curl herself over him when he started groaning again. Suppressed the urge to snap at Mari and make her DO something.

 

“Alright then,” Mari said, shook herself and stepped toward the bed. “We’ll need to move him, get him onto his side—You won’t want to see this.”

 

“What are you going to do!”

 

“Furi… HE might not want you to see this. It’s his dignity we’re talking about here!”

 

She turned to him, her voice pitched even; “Max… Do you want me to stay or leave?”

 

He gripped her hand tighter, didn’t seem to have understood the question. Didn’t seem to know what was going on from the near panic in his eyes.

 

Moira wasn’t alone when she appeared. Toast had brought Capable and Cheedo as well, their eyes wide and frightened when they crowded into the room to see.

 

“Out!” Mari waved her hands at them, “OUT! Poor man’s been through enough! OUT!”

 

“What’s happening?” Cheedo said, trying to circumvent Mari’s herding and approach the bed; “I thought he was healing!”

 

Capable’s face was grim, eyes steady and brimming. She shook her head, shoulders drawing up and darted away with a sob.

 

Cheedo let out an exasperated cry and darted after her sister; “Wait! Ca’ wait!”

 

Toast looked torn, a need to follow her sisters almost as strong as her desire to help.

 

“Go,” Mari gave her a little push; “Go see to your sisters, we can handle this.”

 

Spaz came back not long after with an armful of linens, bundled and crumpled where he’d just snatched them off the drying lines on the plateau.

 

“Wait, here!” Mari nudged the sand pot over with her foot. “Take that, need more sand in one of those buckets out there, the tall ones.”

 

Spaz nodded, wrinkled his nose and held the pot out—darted toward the stairs.

 

Moira was moving around, produced one of the little tin boxes Dunny had taught the boys to make from the cans you could find amid the sand every so often. The ones ripped or dented in ways that made it impossible to make explosives or lance tips out of them. Furiosa had never seen the point in the boxes. Some boys put rocks in them and made toys, others poked holes in them and traded them off to travelers. She watched Moira dribble some of Mari’s alcohol into the set of holes in the center and dropped a bottle cap over the hole. “How much d’you reckon?” She lifted her brows at Mari.

 

“I don’t know, better to have too much than not enough,” Mari peered into the tin cup; “When’s the last time he had a smoke?”

 

Furiosa shook her head. “Not long… He dozed off for an hour or two,” she motioned to the markings on the far wall where the sun had been measured. “He had a lot of it, almost a whole one—What are you going to do to him?”

 

Mari crouched by the bed and fitted her slim hand to Max’s nape; “Open your eyes a minute, boy.”

 

His lids twitched and slowly cracked apart.

 

“What kind of pain is it? Full? Like pressure? Or is it just HURT.”

 

He shuddered, said nothing, but his left hand balled into a fist and pressed hard against Furiosa’s knee. His whole body shook with it.

 

“Pressure?” Mari said, brows pulled down, trying to understand.

 

His brows flicked up and his hand dropped back to the mattress. His eyes slid closed again, face pinched in pain.

 

Mari patted his head and turned to her sister, “Better make it a quarter… About body temp if we can manage it.”

 

Moira nodded and shuffled out, returned a few moments later with a pitcher of water and Dag’s teakettle.

 

Furiosa watched, confused as Moira lifted the little tin box toward the lamp, eyes focused—and flame sprang to life at the edge of it. As she watched the fire appeared in little jets around the edge of the box. Moira lifted her head, must have noticed Furiosa’s curiosity, and motions to the flame as she sets the tea kettle down onto it gingerly, “Travel Burner… Can’t put Guzz in it, burns too hot, it’d just explode. BOOM!”

  
Max flinched.

 

“But that Hel Water they make over in the barracks— that works just fine.”

 

Max had an eye cracked open, was watching with an expression that begged for distraction or clarification, Furiosa wasn’t sure. He made a clogged sound of breath through his nose and spoke, his voice naught but a rasp from the acid of his stomach; “What’s happening? What—what’re you doing?”

 

Mari ignored him, pressed her fingertips to his stomach making small left-handed circles across the path of his gut.

 

He flinched tried to pull away, made a low warning sound in the back of his throat.

 

“Your bowels aren’t waking up…” Moira said evenly, speaking in a low tone as she checked the temperature of the water with her little finger. “We’ll set it right, don’t you worry.”

 

He didn’t move, not even a flinch, but Furiosa could FEEL the panic rising in him.

 

Mari bent over his stomach again, listening, then sat up and patted his hip; “We’ll have to jump him… Everything’s ready—it’s trying, but his bowel’s just stalled out.”

 

“Is it the bowel death?” Furiosa ground her teeth.

 

“No, his belly isn’t rigid, see?” Mari catches her hand and presses her own over it.

 

She can feel the muscles of Max’s abdomen twitching helplessly, heard him grunt and the flex of his arm as he contemplated batting them away.

 

He rumbled low in his chest, pulled his lips back from his teeth like a wounded animal.

 

“Easy,” Furiosa pulled her had back, threaded her fingers into his hair instead and leaned over to whisper in his ear; “I’m sorry,” She swallowed; “We’ll figure it out. Just try to relax and—“

 

“Relax?” He snorted, have a full body shudder, “You—you expect me to relax!” He scrubbed his left heel against the mattress nervously and tried to wrench his leg away when Mari bent to unfasten his brace again. “Stopit!”

 

She didn’t listen.

 

He started curling in on himself, trying to arch away from her. “Stop…” He swiped at her with an open palm; “Don’ touch me!”

 

Furiosa caught his arm at the elbow and tried to fold it up over his head, pinned it beneath her own and reached for his other hand, captured his fingers and squeezed, ground her teeth when he squeezed back hard enough to make her arm hurt.

 

Mari climbed to her feet and appraised the water in the kettle, rummaged in her apron pockets and pulled out one of her clamps, handed them to her sister and shook out a few of the sheets from the linens Spaz had brought up, folded them into thick pads about as long and wide as the length of her arm.

 

Moira poured hot water into the camel pack, worked it around with her hands until it was relatively the right temperature and tucked it close to her body, Mari’s clamps closing off the end of the straw. She rummaged in her pocket and pulled out a length of tubing. Furiosa had seen its likeness used to pump the iodine mixture out of Max’s belly. Thought it was the same as that used to transfer blood. Moira hummed as she worked, wedged the straw of the camel bag over the tube and held the joined pieces over the flame of the lamp until it started to darken and melt, then rolled it quickly across the tabletop to permanently bond the two, tested the flow of the water and clamped it off again quickly. She looked up at her sister and nodded; “Ready here.”

 

“Okay,” Mari said with a sigh, “He needs to be on his side, get his right knee up toward his chest… Should be able to do it that way.”

 

“We can handle this,” Moira said soothingly, put a hand on Furiosa’s head and thinned her lips encouragingly. “He’ll be ok.”

 

She considered leaving, truthfully wanted to because she had an idea where this was going and the thought of witnessing it, of Max knowing she was seeing it happen, made her feel slimy and wrong. It was a violation, wasn’t it? Her being here when he didn’t want her to be? Her witnessing the vulnerability of his body?

 

His hands tightened on her—fingers bruising.

 

“Come on, boy it’ll be OK,” Moira was rubbing a long sure hand over his back and he was going tighter by the moment, body coiling to spring or lash out and she didn’t even know it!

 

Furiosa recognized it immediately. It was the same. Just the same as that first night after the cutting when he’d been struggling as Mari and Xana had crowded close to him—How he had sobbed and reached for her, fingers spasming in the emptiness between her body and his.

 

“Max, do you want me to go?”

 

His fingers turned to claws, short nails digging into her skin.

 

“It’s OK, I’ll be right outside—“

 

He didn’t open his eyes, muttered in something close to a whisper into the warmth of her neck; “I don’t know what’s happening.”

 

“I told you—They’re going to—“

 

He shook his head. It was a minute movement, she wouldn’t have known if the hair on his face hadn’t scratched her neck.

 

“—I don’t…” The words died on her lips and she exhaled weightily, eyes falling closed. “Okay… Okay.”

 

Mari had hold of his right hip, Moira his shoulder and together they rolled him onto his left side, stuffed a fat pillow under his ribs.

 

“Where’s that Spazums boy?”

 

“I’ll watch for him,” Moira said gently, handed her sister the bag of water and crept out through a crack in the curtain.

 

“Last chance to leave,” Mari said and caught the waistband of his trousers.

 

Max stiffened head lifting with a snarl; “I’ll leave—Don’t do that—“

 

“Hush,” Mari said and pressed a hand to the small of his back. “We’ve got to get you moving again. It’s a relative death sentence if we don’t. Stagnant bowels can poison you, all of it backing up. You could get a blockage and die… That kind of death isn’t quick—You’ve come this far—You’ve survived the Gut Rot, don’t let a silly little thing like this be the end of you.”

 

He was shaking, the urge to flee palpable, but Furiosa knew, Mari knew—Max himself knew—he wasn’t going anywhere.

 

“It’s not so bad,” Mari encouraged, gripped his ankle as she pulled his trousers free, sat them aside; “It’s uncomfortable, but it’s not so bad… If it hurts we’ll stop. Might take two or three tries before we get you going, but it’ll be just fine,” She caught his right leg under the knee; “Now, keep pressure on those stitches. High as you can!” She pushed his knee toward his chest slowly, steadily until he grunted warningly, then sat with his foot pressed into the side of her thigh.

 

“Moi, any sign of that boy yet?”

 

“He’s coming—he dropped some of the sand. Told him to leave it and get here.”

 

“Good girl.”

 

Furiosa swallowed a nervous lump in her neck, twisted from under Max’s head and stuffed a pillow there instead, dragged one of the cushions over and took up residence in the floor facing away from what Mari was doing. She leaned her head against the side of the mattress and curled her fingers around Max’s again.

 

“Right, here we go,” Mari said softly; “’s just oil right now, try to relax.”

 

He flinched, the knob of his throat bobbing as he swallowed.

 

“Hey,” Furiosa muttered, tried to offer some kind of distraction. “Look at me, Fool.”

 

“And a push, try to relax,” Mari again—Did she have to do that? Keep saying what was happening?

 

He ground his teeth and tried to turn away.

 

“I’m going to open the clamp, if it’s too warm tell me—“

 

A second, two and he shuddered, breath pulling in through flared nostrils. He turned his face into the mattress.

 

“Easy now,” Mari hummed; “Keep relaxed, needs to get up in there, just deep breathe, slow—“

 

Furiosa wetted her lips and leaned closer; “Max?”

 

He grunted weakly.

 

“Breathe… Look at me. See me.”

 

His nostrils flared and he cracked his lids to peer at her, lips compressed.

 

“Did you mean what you said before?”

 

He grunted.

 

“About the plants?”

 

He swallowed convulsively; “You’re asking now?”

 

She sighed; “I’m trying to give you a distraction.”

 

He swiped his tongue over his lips, he still smelled like sick; “Just—“

 

There was a noise from the main room of the vault and Moira stuck a hand through the curtain, deposited a tall pail from the gardens she’d poured the clean sand into then retreated.

 

Furiosa could hear Spaz talking low, out of breath—“Tripped coming up the stairs—It’s not bad, just a little blood.”

 

“Sit down and let me have a look at it—‘s your bad leg iddinit?”

 

“I’ve got him,” Toast said sternly; “Next time I go running and you sit on your rear.”

 

Furiosa tapped her finger against one of the scars on the back of Max’s hand, felt the knobs of his crooked bones. “You came back… You thought you were dying, but you came back.”

 

He swallowed audibly, shifted his face to peer out at her numbly.

 

“You don’t have to leave again, you know that… Right?” She could see the shine of his eye and the black dot of his pupil amid the dark blue; “You can stay… as long as you want.”

 

Something shifted in his eyes, and he turned to look at something else, unnerved by her—cowed.

She didn’t relent; “We wouldn’t be alive right now if you hadn’t chased us onto the salt. What would you have done if we hadn’t been here when the Gut Rot started?”

 

He hesitated, either from thought or discomfort from what Mari was doing to him, he swallowed again, shivered; “Salt prob’ly… Or I’d have gone into the sand… Like Noah.”

 

Furiosa’s brows pulled down; “Noah? What’s that?”

 

“Who,” Max tilted his face, better to breathe and speak; “Boy had Gut Rot—Long time ago… Let the sand reclaim him… Took his mother and sisters to Bartertown… Probably all dead now,” His teeth grit and his face contorted.

 

“Easy does it,” Mari had a hand on his hip and one high on the back of his left thigh, holding the tube in place. “Try to relax and hold it in just a bit longer, almost done.”

 

His hand twitched, face pushed into the pallet, right hand lifting to catch the back of the bedside chair, nails digging into it instead of Furiosa’s flesh, he moved, as if trying to drag himself away from it and Mari’s voice lifted.

 

“Okay,” She caught the clamp again, pinched it over the tube and then seemed to freeze; “Hold it as long as you can.”

 

He was sweating again, trembling, and Furiosa could hear the tension in his breath as the muscles of his abdomen twitched and fought.

 

It seemed to stretch on forever, Max shook and shook and— “Feel sick—“

 

“Shh, just a bit longer—“

 

His head shook roughly back and forth, hair and chin scratching against the pillow. It started low, a desperate growling sound.

 

Furiosa at first thought he was going to vomit, it was the same sound he’d made earlier. She turned on her heels to fetch the sand pot to hold under his face but instead caught Mari’s sigh of relief as the last of the fluid drained out of the bag.

 

“That’s it,” Mari said patting his thigh, “Hold it in, nearly there!” She withdrew the tube and stood, shifted his leg back to lie flat. “Think you can make it to the closet?”

 

He was shaking visibly, “No.”

 

It took both of them to get him off the bed and seated. He shifted uncomfortably, as if precariously positioned and refused any kind of bolstering, snarled threateningly with one hand on his wound when Furiosa tried to cover him with a sheet.

 

“Fool, what’re you doing?” She said wrinkling her nose.

 

He’d gathered the bulk of his genitals into his lap and had pulled the sheet she’d draped his head and shoulders with around himself like a shroud, face flushed from more than the exertion. He refused to look at her, lips rolled up into a pout.

 

Mari flapped her hands, shooing her away; “Men are built different. More down there to get messy,” She tried not to giggle. “Go on, he’ll be fine now. Engine sounds good.”

 

Furiosa stepped out of the room and stood there in the corridor staring at the curtain for a moment before she turned and wandered away into the hydroponics room.

 

Cheedo and Capable were standing close together in the very far corner, near the chamber where the milking mothers had been kept. Capable’s eyes were bloodshot and wet and Cheedo looked on the verge of tears herself.

 

Toast and Spaz were gone and Moira was staring up through the skylight rolling a piece of parsley between her teeth.

 

“Is he alive?” Capable said carefully, voice full of forced bravado.

 

Furiosa tilted her chin up and let out a sigh of relief; “He’s fine.”

 

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	10. This House is not a Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enter the FEELS-ZONE  
> *Twilight-Zone music*

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Mari helped him back into the bed, smiled and patted his shoulder encouragingly, seemed relieved on his behalf.

 

“There,” She said softly, “Let me have a peek and I’ll let you rest,” She peeled up the edge of his bandages and looked beneath, pressed her ear to his stomach and listened for a solid twenty-count before she was appeased, raised up with a sigh and a pat on his chest. “Sounds good,” Then she pulled the blankets up and dumped more sand into the bucket, pushed it into the corner by the desk with the side of her foot and left.

 

Max caught the edge of the blankets and pull them tightly over his shoulder, pull his knees up as far as he could considering the unsettled rumbling of his stomach. After days of no movement down there it was almost as if he could feel everything shifting around. Like there was something alive inside him. He pressed a palm to it as if expecting it to be palpable through his skin.

 

Furiosa didn’t come back.

 

The longer he laid there to colder he seemed to feel, the faster and harder his heart beat in his chest.

 

Something had to be wrong. Their hands—The fear, all of it was building up in his head like a dune. Bigger and bigger and he didn’t know how much more his skin could contain.

 

He’d almost died—Had been prepared to come here and do just that. Leave his body to be shredded and he didn’t think Furiosa and the Sisters would have blinked an eye at it. He hadn’t thought they would care beyond gratitude that he’d let them have the resources he’d been in possession of.

 

He hadn’t thought this would happen. That they would fight so hard to keep him alive—That they would have managed it.

 

Mari had cut him open and pulled out the rotted parts of his insides. She’d had her hands and fingers in places he’d never willingly let anybody touch. Had her HANDS inside him in a way that killed most people, but had strangely, healed him.

 

Max traced his fingertips over his bandages. Felt the numb line of the cut, tenderness if he pressed on it from healing muscles—the low burbling and rumbling of his innards.

 

He remembered being moved into the cutting room. The Ether—Remembered Furiosa’s words.

 

_“You need to save your strength… If she just starts cutting with you awake it could kill you. We don’t have anybody to give you blood. You need to be calm so you don’t bleed so fast… When you wake up it’ll be over. I’ll see you in a bit.”_

 

Had she stayed? Had she stayed the whole time?

 

He didn’t remember much after the cutting. Pain and confusion and fear. Hands—so many hands—voices and the press of bodies so close to his own—TOUCHING HIM. They could so easily have killed him. Just pinned his hands without effort and ripped him open—HADCUTHIMOPEN!

 

They could have killed and taken and HURT—

 

He remembered the sour burn of panic when they kept touching him, kept demanding of him when the only thing he’d been capable of doing without agony was lying there. Even breathing—especially breathing—had hurt. Why hadn’t they just let him die?

 

He didn’t think he’d ever felt anything so physically painful—even having his knee taken out hadn’t been that bad—that pain was vague and dulled by adrenaline and loss and he—he couldn’t exactly remember it, just snippets and vague images as if they’d not really happened to him, but some distant facsimile. Some not-quite-him version of him that existed in memory and the snarl of voices in his head.

 

But there’d been no voices. Not in a long time—Days. Not since after the cutting. Not since the pain had taken him.

 

No phantoms or accusing faces in the edges of his vision.

 

His mind felt calm and clear in a way it hadn’t in forevers, even as his heart was starting to race and his skin prickle with chill.

 

He hummed just to be sure he hadn’t lost his ability to hear. Craved heat and some kind of solidity. SOMETHING to chase away this feeling of WRONGNESS and vulnerability.

 

Someone could find him here—Moira or Mari or the other one—the one with the damning eyes that rolled her nose up at him when Mari had brought in the illegal herb to help with his pain.

 

Maybe that’s what this was. That weed, dulling his senses. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t been able to fight them off. Hadn’t been able to stop the violation—

 

Pinning weight, the crush of a hand on the back of his head, holding him to the earth while they tore at him—

 

He’d woken up naked on a bed in the blood shed covered in wet cloth with dozens of eyes on him. COLDCOLDCOLD and hurting. He could still feel their hands, their laughing voices.

 

He remembered bits and pieces, time and fear thrown around like shrapnel, shards and chunks stuck at random into the meat of his brain.

 

In one instant he was both pinned by Mari and her sisters, and the greasy scum of the Organic Mechanic.

 

Same room, same kind of fear and helplessness. He didn’t know which one was real, didn’t know if they both were or if he’d imagined both.

 

He remembered lying on his back staring up at the ceiling, feeling split in two at his gut with the warm caress of breath against his ear, Furiosa’s arm around him, her lips against his temple; _“Max, it’s alright, just breathe. Shhh.”_

 

He felt himself still, as if just the memory of her voice was enough to quell the quickening flame in his mind.

_FIRE! The green! I can smell it burning!_

 

He’d been irrational, even with this—this jumpstart bullshit. He’d tried to get away from it—He’d made her sit there while it happened even though she’d not wanted to—Even though he’d been able to see the discomfort—DISGUST—on her face she’d sat there.

 

She’d seen him at his lowest. Worse than muzzled and less than human. She’d seen him broken and wasted and powerless to stop anything. Powerless to stop a group of old women from blowing smoke in his face—powerless against his pain—He hadn’t even been able to hold his head up to drink—

 

He’d had to have her help him piss!

 

What must she think?

 

It startled him that he actually cared more about what she thought than what he thought of himself. Not that he’d ever had a very high opinion of himself, but a person has to have a certain amount of faith in themselves in the wastes to survive. She’d seen his—seen his everything, not just physically—She’d seen him stripped of his wits as cleanly as Mari and her sisters had stripped him of his clothes and dignity. Not, he thought, that he had much dignity left. All he had was a strange, animal sense of preservation and even that had been taken from him here.

 

He’d been crowded, tied up, touched unwillingly—CUT OPEN—had f-fingers and—He shivered noticed the room was blurry and swiped the flat of one palm against his face, found an absurd wetness on his cheeks and a clogged wet feeling in his nose that made no sense.

 

Had she drowned him from the inside?

 

His breath hitched and he pulled the blankets over his head, cupped a hand over his face and tried to remember how to breathe. Water was precious and here he was l-leaking all over the place like a cracked radiator.

 

He tried to snuff it back in but that just made it worse and he couldn’t breathe—

 

_Stop it._ He told himself with a baring of teeth. _Stop it, it’s over. Nothing you can do about it now. It’s over. You’re not hurt—not bleeding anymore. Nobody’s touching you, just STOP! Pay attention. STOP IT!_

 

But he couldn’t. He needed something—Needed something to ground him because his mind was still spinning. Was he safe? Was he not safe? Were War Boys going to rush in here and drag him out again? Pin his limbs and face to the earth while—

 

His head dug back sharply on his neck, remembering the touch of the branding iron—hands and bodies and the stink of burned flesh.

 

His skin felt slimy, wet with fear sweat and sickness. His mouth tasted sour—saltybitterBITEBITEITOFF—

 

Oh, HELL what was happening! Why did he feel like he was about to tear apart? Flying free of his axis off into oblivion like being thrown from a car during impact.

 

He could feel the collision in his bones and he ACHED all over from it—EVERYTHING hurt and he couldn’t get away from it. He was still too weak to make it farther than the curtain on his own, if he could even push himself upright.

 

He needed to get out—get AWAY! NEEDED SOMETHING but he couldn’t name it, couldn’t identify it—the warmth in a touch, the coolness of flesh when he’d been fevered—the solidity of a body keeping him upright.

 

PLEASE!

 

And if that wasn’t the worst timing, now his stomach was rumbling again and…

 

He pressed a hand over the sound, tightened all his muscles in fear—but there wasn’t any heat behind it, wasn’t any urgency to release.

 

It had been days since he’d actually felt hungry and the emptiness felt unfamiliar. He hadn’t had anything to eat—No sugar solution, none of that disgusting TONIC sludge they’d been forcing on him.

 

He peeled the blanket back from his face—felt the chill of the room on wet cheeks and eyelashes, but found the place dark save a low sputtering of flame on the wall. The sunlight had retreated from the window.

 

It was utterly silent outside the curtain.

 

The soft whispers of sound echoed through the stone. Car engines and the hum and chug of water being pumped from below.

 

Was that boy out there? The tall pale one who followed Toast? Was anybody out there?

 

He grunted again, just to hear a sound that wasn’t imagined, swallowed and did it again to clear the gunk from his throat. Called out just for the benefit of his own ears; “’llo?”

 

And a voice answered.

 

“Hello?”

 

A child’s voice.

 

Soft and echoing over a distance.

 

Max felt his throat tighten and he yanked the blankets over his head again, pressed both palms over his ears and pulled his knees as far toward his chest as his aching insides would allow. No… nonono, they were back! They were back and they would be angry!

 

“Hellooo?”

 

His eyes and sinuses prickled, flooded and he tried to hide his face in the pillow again, tried to force the sounds and voices out!

 

“C’mon,” A giggle, a whine like a whimper.

 

Max clamped his eyes closed started humming low in the back of his throat, felt the sound become high and wavering as panic and pressure descended over him—awareness of a presence OTHER.

 

A nother voice rose in unison to his own, small and shrill, crackling—

 

Max’s eyes popped open and he stared at the underside of the sheet, breath held.

 

The sound continued, higher and higher—

 

“Boss—Boss’um SHHH!”

 

Max peeled the blanket up and peered out with wet eyes. Saw a small pale child on her tiptoes eyes wide, chin pushed up, shaking as she imitated the noise Max had been making. Another, smaller child was beside her patting her shoulders with his small hands, fingertips stained pink. “He’s s’eepin! Singin’ to s’eeps like Mama!”

 

The girl went quiet, slowly seemed to deflate and flexed her tiny hands on her apron.

 

Real.

 

Max almost chuckled nervously. Real.

 

Then the boy child turned and looked at him with a face like Dag’s, all distrust and loud thought. He poked a hand into the large pocket on the front of his apron and pulled out something red and fat like his fist, took a large bite of it and passed it to his sister.

 

Max’s eyes dropped to the pocket, found it bulging with—what he wasn’t sure, not until the boy reached in again and pulled out another and started chewing, stepped closer bravely and narrowed his pale eyes at Max.

 

“You ‘spose’t be sleepin. Che’Mama sayd you’re sick.”

 

The girl approached fearlessly and took the fruit out of her brother’s hand—bent in close to Max’s face and chewed loudly—

 

And oh, the smell! Sweet and juicy and Max’s mouth watered. He’d been sure he’d tasted it in the sugar solution, so sure, but he’d been afraid to ask, afraid it had been his imagination, having been without anything sweet and fruity for years thousanddays. But there it was, right in front of him.

 

He swallowed convulsively and watched the girl gnaw the fruit down to its leaves, then stuff them into her own apron.

 

The boy child—Bean if his memory served—crowded in too and they watched Max from the edge of the bed like vultures… small, pale vultures stained with juice and soft cheeked with care.

 

Max hadn’t seen many children out in the wastes, but when he did they were often hollow eyed, thinn creatures with mouths full of sharp rotting teeth. Not enough food or nutrition to keep them healthy and sane.

 

But here—Right in front of him—though they were still small, hardships wouldn’t let children be plump and round bellied without illness as a cause. But Blossom and Bean were sturdy, sun kissed and well proportioned for what Max assumed was their third year of life. Healthy from pure water and good food.

 

Bean’s eyes flicked from Max’s face to the pocket of his apron and he plucked up another berry for his sister and himself.

 

Max whined, helpless and dazed and his stomach roared audibly. So loud Blossom’s little invisible brows lifted and she stopped chewing long enough to make a warbling, giggling sound in the back of her throat.

 

Max glanced at the curtain but saw no trace of Cheedo or Dag or anybody other than the twins. Were they alone? Why wasn’t someone with them? Could he maybe grab one of those berries without making them cry?

 

Blossom pressed her elbows onto the mattress and swung herself up onto the bed.

 

“Boss—Boss’um, NO!” Bean scurried up after her. “No, gotta get down! Not OK! NOT OK! Mama says not boys! Not get in beds with boys!”

 

Blossom grabbed the round pillow and rolled with it to the head of the bed, propped herself up against Max’s shoulders and kicked at her brother with a whine.

 

“Boss, we gotta go! Gotta get th’ p’oppers to Mama! For to make soup!”

 

Blossom growled and threw the pillow at Bean’s face.

 

“Hey!” Max barked softly and the girl bounced away with a hiss and a gnash of her small sharp teeth.

 

Bean puffed out his chest protectively, little face twisted into a snarl.

 

Max moved slowly, knew a biter when he saw one and motioned to the boy’s apron.

 

Bean’s lips pulled back over his teeth and he pulled out one of the berries, tottered over and held it out for Max to take. Didn’t even flinch when Max took it a little rougher than he should have. Seemed like he was used to things being snatched away from him if Blossom’s antics were any inclination.

 

Max’s hands shook, his mouth watered and he barely even twisted the stem and leaves off before he stuffed the berry whole into his mouth. Chewed rapidly with a loud groan and tried to contain the juice between his lips.

 

It had been so long—Too long, since he’d had anything but old tinned food that had a fifty-fifty chance of giving him botulism, and old lizard that had a fifty-fifty chance of being tough and full of small bone shards or making his tongue swell and peel.

 

Bean popped up an eyebrow, as if amused and held out another berry, crouched and shuffled forward a little closer. Handed over another before Max even had the leaves pinched off, but he took that one too.

 

They were sweet and cool from the night air, ripe and tender and practically melted on his tongue.

 

Blossom giggled and rolled over his legs, settled herself sitting on his foot and picking at a scab on her knee.

 

“You like p’oppers?” Bean said with a tilt of his head. “We like ‘em too,” He shivered and made a loud growing hungry noise and licked his lips. Blossom mimicked him and rubbed her little stomach.

 

Bean clambered up and over top of Max, like he was a ladder. Max wrapped both arms around his middle with a whine because the child’s knee caught him right above the hip and sent a jag of pain across his middle.

 

Why were they climbing on him? Why were they even here? If he took the bag from the boy and scared them off would they find their mother? Would Dag come up here and shriek at him for frightening her babies? Or would she chide them for going into a man’s room as he suspected she would do… Then come and bite his head off.

 

He was considering the risk of taking it anyway when Blossom grunted loudly and pushed her pinched fingers toward her mouth.

 

Bean looked up, unfazed and watched her do it again, then handed her a berry.

 

Cheedo had said that Blossom didn’t talk. That she could, but just didn’t. Max watched her closely. Every twitch of her fingers or gnash of her teeth, the tone and quality of every grunt and whine and snarl.

 

Bean responded to most of them, either grunting or whining back, or offering some form of contact. Stretching out his leg to wiggle his toes against her knee. Patting her hand, snapping his teeth when she tried to take his fruit again. Laughing when she made a particular gesture toward Max.

 

Max said nothing, ate every berry that came near him, snuck his hand into the bag and took a few when the boy wasn’t looking. Tried to ignore the sticky pink mess on their faces or his fingertips and the corners of his mouth. Tried to ignore the weight of them on the bed and their proximity.

 

They made his heart race and his breath quicken. Made his skin prickle with nerves. Where was Dag? Or Cheedo? Or whoever was supposed to be watching over them? Why were they alone?

 

Bean plunged his hand into the limp pocket of his apron and fished his hand around, made a hollow whimpering noise and peered in; “Uh-oh…” He turned the pocket up and a few empty stems and leaves spilled out.

 

Blossom covered her sticky mouth with one small palm, eyes wide.

 

“Blossom? Bean!” A voice from the far end of the hallway. The thud of feet.

 

“BLOSSOM!”

 

Max cleared his throat; “Hey!”

 

The footsteps froze. “Max?”

 

“In here.”

 

Bean’s lips rolled back from his teeth and he futilely tried to scoop the stems and leaves into his apron pocket. Blossom curled herself up and pulled the round cushion over her face, as if trying to hide beneath it.

 

The curtain fluttered back and Cheedo pushed into the room, eyes wide and fearful… until they dropped to Blossom and Bean and the mess of curled green leaves on the bed. It took her all of five seconds to take in the juice stains on Blossom’s fingers and Bean’s mouth and her shoulders fell; “Oh no…” She flicked her eyes to Max apologetically; “Are you alright?”

 

Max licked his lips, tried to hide the sticky stains on his fingers, but Cheedo wasn’t stupid, “You shouldn’t have done that! Oh! Mari hasn’t said you can have food yet! What if you make yourself worse!”

 

Max didn’t care truthfully, “’s strawberries.”

 

Cheedo’s nose wrinkled up; “What?”

 

Max flipped one of the leaves away from himself, couldn’t exactly meet her eyes; “Strawberries.”

 

“Dag calls ‘em ploppers.”

 

Max grunted, still felt somehow hollow and hungry, but resigned himself to it now that he’d been caught.

 

Cheedo propped her hands on her hips and leveled a glare at Bean and Blossom; “Well, what do you have to say for yourselves?”

 

Bean made a miserable face and teared up, pushed out a few aborted half-sobs and rubbed wetness from his eyes, Blossom hadn’t moved, still pretending she was hidden behind the cushion.

 

Cheedo shook her head, “Go! Go show your mama what you’ve done. Tell her Max helped you eat them all.”

 

Bean climbed off the bed whimpering and shuffled away with his head down.

 

“You too!” Cheedo swatted gently at Blossom’s back end and took the cushion from her. The girl moaned and darted after her brother.

 

“I’m sorry they bothered you,” Cheedo said nervously, glanced around the room and backed toward the curtain, “I’ll let you rest.”

 

Max opened his mouth but no words came out and by the time he’d decided that yes, he did want to say something Cheedo was gone again.

 

He pulled the blanket back over himself after a moment, and felt the nervousness left by the presence of Dag’s children slowly beginning to recede, replaced by an awareness of the food in his stomach.

 

He laid there for a while, listening to the seemingly deafening noise from his middle and felt a chill creep into him. Awareness not only of how close he’d come to death in the past five ten days, but the lingering sensation of hands on his body.

 

Hands he’d been powerless to prevent touching him—Mari’s slick fingers and—He shuddered, felt sick and slimy under his skin. He couldn’t chase the memories away. Even counting the wrinkled leaves stuck in the blanket and on the sheet didn’t help, licking the lingering taste of strawberry off his fingertips did nothing.

 

He was sinking back into that yawning void of WHAT IF, and the remembered feeling of violation. He rubbed the heel of his hand against his eyes, felt like he was going to swell and split at the seams, full of angry ants and nervous energy.

 

He heard feet in the hallway. Boots.

 

Not Cheedo, not Capable—Maybe Toast—no, too heavy for Toast.

 

His stomach tightened and he thought—for half an instant—that he may be sick. But then the footsteps entered the vault, grew louder and closer—down the corridor and—

 

It wasn’t Furiosa.

 

It was a tall whitehaired Vuvalini woman. Xana.

 

Max felt his hackles rise.

 

Xana’s approach faltered and she paused by the door, blinked at him and lifted the corner of her mouth in an amused snort; “Heard they got you started again. That’s good…” She approached the desk and plucked the pipe from inside the tin cup; “Mind if I borrow this? Got a couple boys in the machine shop going to make duplicates… Banka’s weeds are gaining popularity in the sick rooms,” She peered at the remaining flecks in the bowl of the pipe and shrugged, lit it and took a drag, handed it over to Max without even asking; “It may take a while, go ahead and get it now.”

 

He considered refusing, considered throwing it at her head and making a break for it, but what good would that do? He couldn’t even keep two babies from crawling all over him—couldn’t even take a bag of strawberries from two children who grew weepy and fled when Cheedo scolded them—She hadn’t even shouted!

 

He turned his face away and took a long drag on the pipe, then another and handed it back, didn’t watch as Xana finished what was in the bowl and knocked the ashes out into the sand pot. She grunted in appreciation—or acknowledgement, Max couldn’t be bothered to try and guess, and left with the pipe.

 

It took only long enough for things to grow incredibly quiet again before the thoughts circled back and Max found himself prey to them.

 

She’s not coming back.

 

_She’s seen too much—I put her through too much. She’s not coming back. Why should she? I’m mending, there’s no point._

_She was there, she saw… It felt disgusting, and she had to watch it! She had to see me like that—_

 

“You came back… You thought you were dying, but you came back… What would you have done if we hadn’t been here when the Gut Rot started?”

 

_What would you have done if we’d turned you away?_

_You’d be dead right now._

_We wouldn’t have had to go through this if you hadn’t shown up here._

_I wouldn’t have had to go through this if you hadn’t come back._

 

He was leaking again, heavier than before—uncontrollably, he couldn’t catch his breath. It was stupid—POINTLESS!

 

More boots in the hallway. Two sets this time.

 

“How’s your leg?”

 

“’s fine. Just a little cut… Toast thinks the scar’ll look nasty!” He sounded so gleeful at the concept.

 

Max wiped both hands frantically over his face, heart in his neck. No time—no time to hide it! He pulled the sheet over his head just as the curtain parted.

 

“Max?”

 

He didn’t even breathe.

 

“Is he sleeping?”

 

Furiosa hummed thoughtfully, neither a yes or no.

 

“I’ll be out here if you need me,” Spaz bit into something—it sounded crunchy and wet—Max wanted more strawberries.

 

The boy padded back across the vault, a chair scraped outside in the hydroponics room and everything was quiet.

 

Furiosa moved around the room. Turned up the lamp a little and settled in the chair by the bed, closer than was strictly necessary.

 

“Hey,” She tugged gently on the sheet. “I know you’re awake. Are you OK?”

 

He snuffed loud enough for her to hear.

 

“Come out of there before you suffocate,” She tugged the sheet harder and folded it down to his shoulder. Her face went through a rapid fire change of emotion, calm indulgency, confusion, fear, shock, and back to fear. “What is it?” She pushed her fingertips into his hair and he jerked away with a quiet snarl.

 

She was still, hand still raised and shaped to the curve of his skull, but her face had changed, become schooled and empty. She withdrew, shifted the chair back away from the bed and picked up the book she’d been skimming; “Do you want me to leave?”

 

He said nothing, rubbed fingertips through the wetness in his eyes, smeared it toward his hair and refused to look at her. Refused to speak. He winced and forced himself over onto his back, turned his head away on the pillows and tucked his hands under the blankets at his sides.

 

Furiosa sat by the bed and watched him, pondered the loud unsettled gurgling of his stomach and how he occasionally shifted as if it’s sudden shock into movement hurt him.

 

She wanted to say something, to ask what was wrong—what had changed, but she shook her head and said nothing of it; “Mari said you’d pulled some stitches… They weren’t torn or broken, but she said not to be alarmed if there was a little blood on your bandages.”

 

Max didn’t respond in the least.

 

“Cheedo mentioned you’d met Bean and Blossom… That you ate half a bag of ploppers. I was worried they’d hurt you but Mari said you’re OK to have soft food now that you’re moving again… Won’t be long until you’re up and on your own again.”

 

He flinched visibly.

 

On his own. She didn’t want to be here anymore—didn’t want HIM to be here anymore.

 

“I—“ He cleared his throat, thought his voice sounded weak and clogged; “I’ll leave as soon as I’m up again.”

 

Furiosa’s head lifted, her breath sucked in a little sharper. He could feel her looking at him, staring, but then she sighed, swallowed;

 

“I’ll have someone look over your truck before you go.”

 

He nodded, hummed without much feeling and went still, told himself that it was for the best. He was alive, they didn’t want him here. He was wasting their resources—

 

Half a bag of strawberries. How many people could that have fed? How much time had he taken away from Mari and the others that could have been spent helping someone else? How long had he kept Furiosa away from her duties—whatever those may be?

 

If he could manage to stand on his own tomorrow he’d demand his clothes. He didn’t need to walk far to drive, it couldn’t be much worse… The stitches though… He could cut and pull those when the time came, it didn’t seem difficult.

 

Nothing was holding him back from leaving except his own inability to move.

 

I’ll move. I’ll go. I won’t come back.

 

Furiosa sighed and he heard her book shut. The muted scuff of it sliding onto the desk. She stretched, her prosthetic made a few mechanical whirring noises, her back popped. “Max?”

 

He tried not to flinch.

 

“Max, are you still awake?”

 

Silence, stillness.

 

She pushed herself up quietly and stepped forward, stood over him breathing. LOOKING at him.

 

Max wanted to snarl, felt the tremor of energy rolling around in his stomach—

 

Her fingers pushed gently through his hair and her breath hitched.

 

His throat tightened— If he hadn’t had his good ear tilted toward her he never would have heard it. The sound of her breath shaped like words;

 

“Don’t go…” She swallowed and her throat clicked, “I don’t—“ A sigh and her fingers retreated, her weight shifted on her feet and her boots scuffed quietly against the floor, out the curtain and into the main room.

_“You don’t have to leave again, you know that… Right? You can stay… as long as you want.”_

 

It struck him suddenly, a dream like memory of her voice behind the veil of fever. One of those moments lost before the cutting, after he’d fought them as they removed his clothes. Her body pressed up against his back sheltering him within the bracket of her knees and arms. Cold water swiping against his skin, repetitive humming and chanting of rituals to bring down his temperature.

_“It’s OK, you’re safe now… Everything is going to be OK, Max. I—I’ll take care of you. I’ve got you.”_

 

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	11. Gimmie Shelter

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It wasn’t that she was angry. She didn’t have a reason to be angry. She was just—disappointed. Max was a worthy ally—no… no, he was more than that and she knew it, felt it in her gut and chest and in the tingle of her fingertips.

 

Max could and would make his own decisions. He wasn’t something to be played with. Yes, he’d been unbelievably sick and it had been satisfying to help him recover—had stirred something deep in her chest she didn’t know existed, just by allowing her to help— But it was different. This want for him to stay. It was more than just her desire to see him well, it was a desire to see the tension of worry and fear smoothed from his face. To see the calm he’d worn while sleeping pressed to her side—snoring and drooling and grunting in his sleep.

 

He’d almost died.

 

Furiosa had seen death, seen men and War Boys and women shredded, bodies sectioned out—had seen living corpses with their insides ruptured all over the road. None of it—NONE OF IT—had struck her as deeply as when Mari and Moira had cut Max open, the dark hollow beneath his skin haunted her dreams.

 

Sometimes she dreamed he split himself open and blackness spilled out of him, ate up everything like acid and he would weep and try to hold it in—look into her eyes terrified and drowning and reach for her.

 

She’d barely slept after that one. Could feel the tension and the exhaustion pulling at all her edges.

 

And now he was going to leave. Just leave as if he hadn’t looked at her with tears in his eyes, silent and searching for some kind of anchor. As if he hadn’t clung to her and begged her to _make it stop—_

 

Furiosa ran water over her hand from the sink tap, rubbed her face with it because she felt dizzy and on the verge of collapse, stood there until she couldn’t deny the fact that the moisture on her cheeks wasn’t all water.

 

It was fruitless, she knew. She couldn’t force him to stay. Though part of her wanted to—If he wanted to go she would let him. Yes, she’d be bitter about it, but as he’d said himself, he made his own way.

 

She hoped though, had hoped—that he would stay. Now that it looked like he would recover fully she’d hoped that he would see how well they worked together, and how much she—how much they could need him.

 

How much he was wanted.

 

She rubbed her eyes dry. Sleep. She needed sleep. Her emotions were running high because she’d not had a good rest since he’d come back. First from fear that each breath may be his last, then from worry that his pain would grow too strong—

 

She’d seen his insides!

 

Furiosa shook her head. She needed rest or she’d make herself sick. Wind up in a bed up on the ward. She finished her business in the water closet, washed her hand and face again and went back to the sick room.

 

Max was awake, blanket pulled up over the crown of his head. He looked at her as if caught in the act of some great atrocity. He was visibly shivering, eyes wide and wet. He pulled his lips back if trying to snarl but the pallor of his face and the pained curl of his body changed the expression into barely restrained agony.

 

Furiosa felt herself moving toward the sand pot, thinking maybe it was his stomach again, his insides had been making ugly noises for a while now so wouldn’t it make sense…

 

But he wasn’t moving, wasn’t squirming in urgency… If anything he’d shrank up on himself more.

 

“What is it? Are you in pain?”

 

He wouldn’t meet her eyes now, just lie there shaking with his jaws clenched.

 

“What happened to the pipe?”

 

He sighed, shook his head, made a sound in the back of his throat in negation.

 

“If you’re hurting you need it—“

 

“No.”

 

“Is it because of the illegal? What does that mean?”

 

His shoulders hunched forward and a little bit of color returned to his cheeks. He scratched the hair there where the moisture was likely drying. “Doesn’t matter.”

 

“If it’s making you hurt when you don’t have to it does matter.”

 

His mouth opened and closed, a rumbling sound came from his throat, he pulled his chin protectively toward his chest.

 

Furiosa rubbed her brow, could feel a dull ache of tension building at the back of her head and between her eyes. She rubbed at the spot tiredly.

 

He swiped the tip of his tongue over his lips, nodded minutely.

 

She nodded, then nodded again, determined. Max’s face was pale and slack, eyes wide when she tugged at the blanket and tried to slide in next to him.

 

He clings to the sheet, cheeks going red so she lets him have it, a barrier between them, and shifts onto the mattress carefully aware of the pale band of cloth around his hips. His whole body goes stiff when she’s settled and drawn the blanket over her shoulder and his, inched herself closer until she could feel his breath against her skin. She folds her right arm under her head and stares at him for a while blinking sleepily. “Try to sleep for now, she’ll bring the pipe back in a bit.”

 

He swallows audibly, a click of his throat. His eyes track down the length of her and back to her face, avoid her gaze completely.

 

She exhaled and shifted her palm, pushed the hair off his brow and scratched her short nails against his scalp. His hair was dirty again, all the sweat and exertion, it hung lank across his brow and she pushed it back, made small circles with the pads of her fingers, “Just try—“

 

He shuddered and even as his head pushed into her touch she saw a renewed flow of wetness across his temple. Was she hurting him? She lifted her fingers away, curious and watched as he shifted forward, oh so slightly, and butted his head against her fingers.

 

Something went tight in her chest and she pressed the pad of her thumb to a furl of tension in his brow, pressed and rubbed in small circles until it relaxed and his breath was reduced to wet, loud shudders.

 

It wasn’t pain, she understood that now—not in the physical sense. And he may be chilled, but the shivering wasn’t from cold.

 

“Hey,” She whispered, felt him flinch at even that hushed sound, eyes popping open to stare up at her as if in the midst of panic. She’d seen the same look on his face from behind the bars of a muzzle and the black bulk of a gun. “Hey.”

 

His eyes flicked left and right and he snuffed, rubbed the drops from his eyelashes with the heel of his hand and tried to breathe through clogged nostrils.

 

“What’s wrong?” She shifted closer, barely two inches, but close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath and the gentle tremors still running through him. “What do you need?”

 

His head shook, barely a movement at all, more of a twitch than anything.

 

She brushed her knuckles against his cheek; “Max.”

 

He bowed his head, breath coming out in a shuddering whoosh, brow pressing into the cup of her palm. “Don’t,” He swallowed convulsively, voice crackling as he tried to keep it quiet; “Don’t stop,” He choked, had to clear his throat; “I…” His lips rolled back from his teeth, shuddering, trying to fight it down, forcing himself to still and failing.

 

She shifted closer, nudged his ribs with the side of her stump; “C’meer,” She urged him closer, felt his body fold into her own like the pages of a book. The warm weight of him against her side was familiar, she’d woken up days ago with him curled into her side, snoring and drooling on her shirt. “What’s wrong?”

 

He shook his head, and if anything, her concern seemed to make him worse.

 

“Max, what is it?” She tugged his hair hard enough that he had to lift his head and look at her. “What’s wrong?”

 

He bared his teeth, face wet, eyes red and the words just wouldn’t come out, stopped and stuck in his throat like sand; “Why do you care?”

 

She narrowed her eyes; “Care about what? That you’re in pain? I care because I don’t like seeing you hurt, not when you don’t have to,” Her voice hitches; “You don’t know what it was like watching them cut on you… And after—I never want to see you hurt like that again.”

 

He clenched his jaw, body trembling under the gentleness of her touch. “You stayed.”

 

Her tongue felt thick and stupid; “I wasn’t going to let you go through that alone.”

 

He shifted restless, hands going to his belly; “They put… their hands in me,” He gave a sick shudder; “Pulled at my guts a-and cut—“ A flinch and his feet worked against the mattress, “Took my clothes off—“

 

“You were fevered, they had to get it down.”

 

He shook his head; “’could have hurt—someone could have—“ His mouth quivered; “They put their hands inside me.”

 

She passed her hand over his head again and he flinched away—only to push back into it with a sound like a sob.

 

“If they hadn’t you would have died.”

 

He hid his face in her hand as if to say he knew that, she could feel the warm huff of his breath and the wetness of tears;

 

“They touched me and I didn’t know—I didn’t want it—“

 

“You would have died—“

 

He hiccupped and clenched his jaw tightly; “Feel sick—“

 

Her body tightened up; “Max.”

 

His breath was too quick, pupils too big, sweat stood out in beads on his brow and his whole body shook.

 

“Look at me… You’re OK… It was awful, I know, and I’m sorry. But I couldn’t let you die, I couldn’t just sit back and watch you die.”

 

“Felt awful— Why’re you here? You saw—Why are you still here?” His voice was wet on the cusp of sobbing. He didn’t understand, couldn’t—

He had no idea.

 

She inhaled shakily and bowed her brow into his, defeated; “Because you matter. You matter to Toast, and Cheedo, and Dag, and Capable… And you matter to me.”

 

He shuddered. All it took was her hand curling at the back of his neck, the hitch of her breath against his own and he crumbled.

 

He slid his arm over her waist, fingers curling like talons in the fabric of her shirt and the wraps of her chest. As if he intended never to let go.

 

She rode out the hitches of his breath and shaking of his body with her cheek pressed to his hair, his prickly face against her neck.

 

He didn’t make much sound at all, which she supposed was worse than if he’d wailed.

 

She didn’t want to move, for fear that he would withdraw again, kept her false arm down, bracing her against the mattress and him against her chest.

 

“It’s going to be OK,” She felt the words in her own chest, had spoken them before but never really realized their meaning until now. “We’ll be OK.”

 

Sleep didn’t come quickly, or easy. He had laid there with his arms around himself long enough for her to rock back and remove the arm, settle its bulk on the chair by the bed and kick off her boots, then he was right there, clinging to her as if she were something precious. She didn’t know how to process it at first, just let him cleave to her and she held on just as tightly, hummed nonsense little tunes and petted her hand over his back and head, felt herself drifting off to the steady sound of his breathing.

 

Every so often Max jolted himself from a doze with a soft grunt or a little twitch and Furiosa was too close, too high strung not to awaken as well. But she spoke softly into his ear that everything was OK, he was safe.

 

She rubbed her eyes and peered down at him, remembered propping him against her and holding the pipe for him not but days ago; now he fitted himself against her side, face still wet, snuffling through a clogged nose with red puffy eyes, and his fingers in her shirt like an anchor.

 

He looked up at her and he seemed so tired. As if wrung for all his worth. She combed the mess of his hair from his brow and felt him hum quietly against her shoulder. The rumble of it in his throat and he blinked lazily, once, twice, a third time and his eyes stayed closed.

 

“Max?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You know that you’re welcome to stay… right? This can be a home for you too if you want it.”

 

His eyes slowly opened and he peered up at her in a manner that she had no way to describe. Quiet, stalled out in his head maybe. His breathing quickened and his hands opened and closed.

 

“If you do leave after you’re healed you can come back any time. When you’re tired and just want to feel safe for the night, you have a place here.”

 

He looked away, overwhelmed if the way he tucked his arms across his chest was any indication. Maybe even afraid.

 

But he nodded, tilted his head and chest against her and let his eyes fall shut again.

 

Eventually the twitching and snuffling subsided and when Furiosa opened her eyes again Max was snoring against her chest, body lax, and warm, and soft against her side and she had both arms lifted above her head, boneless and groggy from sleeping so long.

 

Capable was standing in the doorway with a tray of food. A lumpy gray porridge with bits of cooked fruit in it for Max and a flat bit of bread with beans and greens in it for Furiosa.

 

Capable lifted an eyebrow when the older woman peered up at her almost defiantly and handed over the food. She said nothing, but pulled the new pipe Xana and the metal shop boys had fashioned, handed it over for Furiosa’s inspection. The bowl of this one was square with softened edges and a little hook on the bottom to rest on your thumb and forefinger. It looked to have been made from large square nuts welded together and ground flat and shiny and smooth inside. It was plain, but at the same time quite beautiful with decorative spirals carved into the stem. The boys in the metal shop took intense pride in their work, melding functionality with aesthetic. Furiosa showed it to Max who blinked at it dazedly and focused back on the food.

 

Capable put the pipe away in the tin cup and left—Hid herself outside the curtain for a moment or three longer than she should have to watch through a little tear. Fascinated with the way neither Max nor Furiosa deigned it pertinent to separate long enough to eat. Furiosa wrapping her arm around Max’s head to hold the food to her lips, Max bracing the edge of his bowl against her ribs and prodding the spoon into the mixture, prying out bits to lick away and swallow. Not even bothering to untuck his arm from between them to manage full bites until she’d finished eating and shifted her hand to his shoulder.

 

They fit together well. Scarred where the other was soft, and harsh where the other was hardened. They rounded one another’s sharp edges and became something stronger. Capable left with a grin on her face.

 

Max’s gut made another gurgling noise and Furiosa tried to hold back a giggle.

 

“’s not funny.”

 

“Yes it is.”

 

“I can’t help it!”

 

“That’s why it’s funny!”

 

He made a face at her, growled in agitation with his spoon in his mouth. He sighed, the back of his head mashed into the space between her breast and throat, took another slow bite of porridge.

 

She hummed in acknowledgement, “When you’re finished with that you should sleep.”

 

He made a discontented whining noise; “’done nothin’ but sleep for days… tired of it.”

 

She snorted. “Well, you could scrape that wool off your face,” She scratched at the irritated skin of her shoulder and throat; “I think you’ve given me fleas.”

 

“’don’t have fleas.”

 

She hummed, watched him fitfully scrape the bottom of his bowl, he swallowed the last few bites and used his finger to swipe it clean, was half asleep by the time he’d managed it.

 

She shifted lower in the bed again, turned onto her side and pulled the blanket up over them both. Settled there watching him, trailing her fingers against the backs of his shoulders, his nose pressed against the crease of her neck. Neither one of them had so much as moved.

 

When she finally woke the sun was gone, and there was a plate covered by a bit of cloth on the desk and two mugs which had long since gone cold.

 

Furiosa’s bladder was so full it hurt, she didn’t even want to think about how full Max must be.

 

“Max.”

 

He made a soft sound low in his throat, not a groan or a grunt, but more of a melodic hum, like he was remembering some song sung to him. Maybe it was something Furiosa herself had whispered into his ear up on the ward days ago.

 

“I have to piss, let me up.”

 

He pried his eyes open and blinked around dazedly. His face was puffy and his hair was a mess. What was worse, when he rolled away Furiosa became aware of an insufferable itch on her chest and arm. The hair on his face coupled with the heat of his breath and maybe a little drool— She scrubbed her nails against the spot and swung herself up through the semi-darkness toward the water closet. Heard Max whine in protest behind her; “Just pinch it! I’ll be right back.”

 

She thought maybe there was a small ocean inside her, but once she was finished she shuffled back into the room and found Max sitting on the edge of the bed.

 

“Did you do that yourself?” She found his trousers and crouched to fit his feet into the legs.

 

He grunted, tapped his fingers against his bandages.

 

“’it hurt?”

 

He pursed his lips and glanced away.

 

“Was it worth it?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She snorted, wedged her hand under his hip and helped him stand, made him put a little more effort into it, just to test his strength and felt the muscles in his legs twitch against her own.

 

He got the trousers up on his own, held the string in his fist and pressed his knuckles into his pelvic bone in an effort to hold back the tide.

 

She started to leave him at the door to the water closet but he tightened his fingers on her arm and made a hollow sound in his throat;

 

“Ahm…”

 

“What? Do you want me to prop you up?”

 

His cheeks went red; “’need to… sit down.”

 

“Dizzy?”

 

He gave her an uncertain look from the side of his eye and pointed to the toilet.

 

“Oh,” She shook her head, “Sorry.”

 

The edge of his mouth ticked up.

 

She left him to his business and went upstairs to boil more water. Came back down and found him standing at the sink with a forlorn expression on his face, trousers around his ankles.

 

She almost laughed, may have wheezed out a giggle or two at the displeased look on his face, but tugged them back up and braced a hand at the small of his back as he shuffled out.

 

The main room was dark but two or three small electric lamps. She could hear the trickle of water out of the fountain down below and the distant sound of an engine revving in the garages. She wondered who was up trying to tune up what to be making noises that loud. The Mothers would probably complain about the noise tomorrow, say some pup or another was disturbed in their sleep. Furiosa grinned and steered Max back into the sick room and pushed him into the chair by the bed, disappeared long enough to retrieve the pot of water off the stove upstairs and a basin.

 

It was too late for a full washing as she’d done before, but checking his bandages wasn’t a bad idea, and swiping the creases in his skin with a soapy cloth and cleaning his hair seemed to ease a lot of the tension in his body.

 

“You like having your head touched?”

 

He hummed tunelessly; “Gently… yes.”

 

She nodded, scratched her nails softly against his scalp and reached for a clean towel.

 

She scoured his head with it to soak up most of the moisture and pulled playfully at the awkward tuft at the back of his head. He made a soft snarling noise in return but it held no malice.

 

She sat on the edge of the desk holding a small cracked hand mirror for Max while he sheered down some of the hair on his face with a pair of blunt nosed scissors she’d found upstairs. Cut it down until it was short enough to be scraped away with the sharp edge of a knife.

 

She was more upset when he nicked himself than he was, she’d seen enough of his blood to last a dozen lifetimes and stood there over him with the edge of a cloth pressed to the little cut on his jaw for a long time… Until she realized he was staring right at her something soft and awed in his gaze.

 

She wanted to flip the end of his nose in punishment for the unsettled weightless feeling in her middle, but instead he tilted his head into her touch—

 

And grazed the softness of his lips against her inner wrist.

 

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	12. Taking Root

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to fadagaski, r3zuri, and silver-89 for putting up with my bs these last few weeks. I've been an unholy terror. Thank you!
> 
> This is me indulging in some headcanons XD. I hope you enjoy!

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0-0-0

The food on the desk was cold, another porridge, Furiosa’s with honey and a few crushed nuts, Max’s with different fruits and a generous helping of honey. She felt a little envious when she saw it. 

They ate in relative silence, and afterward Furiosa helped him to his feet and they shuffled out into the vault’s main room. They made a few trips around the perimeter and on the third Max slowed to a stop by the stairs and the sofa he’d rested on before. Craned his neck and peered down the steps into the darkened little garden under the glass. 

Furiosa looked as well, tried to discover what he found so fascinating. “What is it?”

He hummed noncommittally, and shifted forward as if to bypass it, but Furiosa didn’t move, instead, she steered him toward the stairs. 

“Wait—What—“ He rolled his lip up; “What if I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

He tilted his head toward the stairs.

“We’ll figure it out,” She took the first two steps down, turned and put a hand on each of his hips, nodded when his hands went to her shoulders. “Just—just don’t fall on me.”

He snorted, and they started a slow, halting descent.

There were no lights down here. No lamps. Just the moonlight and whatever firelight filtered in from the gardens and the watch fires below. 

Max paused every other step to just stare around him, eyes wide and somehow innocent in his usually hardened face. They reached the bottom of the stairs and Furiosa waited until he’d nodded before shuffling them forward again. 

The large sofa in the corner seemed most logical. He could rest there, comfortable, and enjoy the greenery and sunlight when morning came. Mari had said that sunlight would do him good. 

He settled himself at the far side of the sofa, hand on his belly, and let the cushions swallow him. After a moment he lifted a hand and caught one of the leaves on a potted palm and drew it down to look at it. Feel the supple texture of it between his rough fingers. 

Furiosa took a seat at the other end of the sofa and slouched low, stared out over the wastes at the distant amber glow of Gas Town. 

They said nothing.

The fountain trickled at the other side of the garden and Furiosa could hear Max breathing. 

Slow, deep, regular. 

Healthy. 

Her eyes prickled and she covered them, hoping the darkness hid the wet shine of them. Took a deep shuddering breath.

He was OK. 

He would live. 

It all hit her at once and she felt dizzy with it. Aware of his presence—his LIFE just there at the end of her reach. 

His fingers nudged her hip, wordless. His face still tilted up, eyes closed, and she patted his hand, forced herself to breathe and blink away the tears. 

He said nothing. 

She didn’t think it was possible to be so kind. 

“If you feel up to it,” She cleared her throat, “tomorrow I’ll show you the gardens. Cheedo said you liked the… strawberries? Strawberries.”

Max hummed, brows lifted; “’long time since I had fruit.” 

She hummed, a soft grin lifting the edges of her lips; “We’ve got more than ploppers up there… Got lemons and plums…” Her smile became wistful, “Peaches… We have peaches now. And grapes—“

“Grapes?”

A hum.

“Can…” He tilted his head toward her; “Can you make wine?”

She turned to look at him with her eyes narrowed; “I don’t know if they’ve tried—how do you do it?”

Max snorted, turned back to the glass; “I don’t know,” He sighed, sadly, and regarded the twinkling lights of Gas Town blotting out some of the stars. 

“I had wine once,” Furiosa said softly; “Before… At my initiation… Maadi used to make it. Grapes and plums… It tasted like jam.” 

Max’s throat made a rusted chuckling sound. He held up two crooked fingers; “Twice… And neither of them tasted like jam.”

“No?”

“No… ’didn’t like it the first time. Second time was better.” 

Furiosa tilted her head toward him, eyes still on the darkened top of the dome; “I wonder if Sorcha can make it.”

Max’s eyes fell closed. “What fruit do you have… up there?”

“Melons, pears… they’re trying to sprout an orange tree, but I don’t think it took.”

Max hummed, scratched absently at his bandages. 

Furiosa swatted his shoulder; “Don’t do that.”

“Itches.”

“That means it’s healing, leave it alone.” 

He scratched at it again and let his head flop in her direction. “Furiosa?”

She hummed, turned to look at him, and let her hand drop to the cushion between them. 

He’d turned his body a little into the sofa cushions and instead of speaking he just nudged her fingers with his own a few times. 

She fell silent, watching him, lifting her fingers so his slotted between them, their palms pressed together.

They watched the sky shift from black to emerald as the sun made its approach. The haze of distant fallout fading into purple and gold and blues of every shade. 

Furiosa saw Max’s eyes flutter shut just as the burning dome of the sun appeared over the horizon and let herself breathe. Let her head fall back against the back of the sofa and the tension bleed out of her bones. 

She slept.

0-0-0

Max didn’t wake when Furiosa did. Not really. He pried one eye open long enough to see her standing at the end of the sofa stretching then he drifted off again. 

He woke some time later in the morning lying under a blanket on the sofa, to sunlight dappled through leaves. A warm peace suffused through every one of his cells. 

He laid there for a long time just watching the sun shift. And the leaves tremble with the movement of the air through vents higher on the dome. 

There were flowers just in the edge of his vision. Pale pink and fragrant in the warmth of the sun. 

Roses. 

Roses the size of his fist. 

There was an old keg in the corner with a vine growing in it—it had stretched tendrils up the wall, draping in long waves like a curtain. Flowers shaped like horns and bright purple with white centers. 

Another steel drum with holes cut in the sides out of which succulents grew. Aloe, and a few others he couldn’t identify. A berry bush here, another there. Moss along the lower edges of the dome where moisture collected. Thick and dark green. It had colored some of the glass near it milky and small mushrooms were sprouting where glass met stone. 

He felt, for a moment, as if perhaps he had died. His body separated and broken down to bare elements, his consciousness merging with the soil that sustained the plants and greenery. 

He felt strangely peaceful and cared for in a way he hadn’t in forevers. 

He didn’t want to move. Even though his bladder screamed for it. He rubbed his face and scratched himself absently, gripped to the sofa back for leverage and pressed a hand to his stomach as he sat up. 

He felt like he could see for eternity, out over the sands and dunes and mountains. Thought, perhaps, if he stood on his toes near the glass, he could see far out into the Plains of Silence. Like the curve of the earth was laid out there for him to see.

There were footsteps from above. Intentionally loud, though cautious. He turned to watch, craned his neck to catch a glimpse of who it could be, to prepare himself, pulled the blanket over his bare shoulders because he felt exposed. 

Toast. He could see the back of her head as she disappeared into her workshop, turned off the lamp over her bench, came back out fiddling with something, her face scrunched in concentration. She must have known he was there because she stood at the top of the steps for a moment, as if battling with herself before she came down. Though, for whatever reason, she didn’t look at him until she was standing a few feet away. 

She was wearing a different pair of trousers today. These had been cut, or torn off just below her knees, showed off the height of her boots, and a large knife handle protruding from the inside of her sock. 

She’d bound her chest differently, he could see the strips of cloth under her shirt, an X pattern over her shoulders, covering some of the lines and dots of her tattoos. 

She had a strange thing in her hands. Wire wrapped around a piece of glass worn smooth by sand and time. And on either side of it a bullet casing with leaves and flowers and birds engraved into it. It made a gentle tinkling sound as she shifted it between her fingers. 

She tilted her face up, nose scrunched in fear and confusion. “What does this mean?”

Max balked at her silently, chin drawn down, eyebrows up. He shook his head. 

Toast rubbed her thumb against the curved edge of the glass. Her hands were shaking. 

Max wetted his lips, shifted against the sofa. “Where did you get it?”

She didn’t look up, seemed smaller somehow; “Spazums.”

“A gift?”

She hesitated; “Sort of.”

Max hummed quietly. “What is it?”

She lifted it carefully, let it dangle on its string against the base of her throat. 

Max’s eyebrows lifted; “’s pretty.” 

“But what does it mean?” Her eyes seemed somehow desperate, but her posture—her insistence said she already knew.

“What do you think it means?”

Her hands dropped to her sides, head rolling back on her neck; “He kissed me after…” She pulled her lower lip into her mouth; “He’s not done that before… Not like that.” 

Max hummed again. “He’s—“ He motioned to her face; “He’s kissed you though?”

“On the jaw, yeah… But not the mouth—” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, pushed it out again pink and slightly swollen, like she’d been doing it for a while, trying to scratch some itch… or recreate it. 

“Did you want it?”

Her nose wrinkled and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, cheeks reddening a little. “It wasn’t awful…”

Max snorted.

“I can’t tell Furiosa… She’d rip his head off,” She pulled the necklace back closer to her face, rolled each bullet casing between forefinger and thumb. “And Cheedo would tell everyone… Dag—Dag’d throw it off the ledge… Capable’d… she’d just get all soppy.”

“And me?”

“Well, you’re a man, right?”

He blinked at her slowly.

She rolled her eyes; “What does it mean—really—when you give someone stuff like this?”

Max scratched the back of his head; “I don’t know… It— Do you want it to mean something?”

She was quiet for just a heartbeat too long; “Maybe?” She let out all her breath in a whoosh; “War Boys—they give one another casings like this—all decorated and shined up—they do that when they pair off.” 

“Pair off?”

“Yeah—they trade casings and if they make it to the next full moon they pair off.” 

Max gave his head a confused little shake. 

Toast rolled her eyes; “They’re half-lives, they can’t husband one another. So, they pair off… But Spaz—Spaz isn’t a half-life anymore and—I think he’s trying to wife me.”

Max’s eyebrows shot up and he choked on his own spit. 

Toast stared at him, didn’t offer to help, didn’t ask if he was OK.

He kept one hand on his stomach, cupped the other over his mouth and coughed until it felt a little less like he was drowning or about to split in two. He made a quick rolling gesture between hacks, urging her to continue. 

Toast ground her teeth; “He can’t do this though. I—I’ve gotta give it back. I can’t be wifed to two people!”

Max shook his head; “You—you’re not. Can’t be m-married to a dead man.” 

“He wasn’t dead when he did that.”

“But he’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter anymore.” 

“How do you know?”

His throat tried to close off again and he started coughing, jarring the sore muscles of his stomach. 

Toast rolled her eyes, stomped to the fountain and returned with a tin can half filled with water, stood there until he’d swallowed it then took a seat at the far end of the sofa from him, her knee and the boot with the knife in it between them. “Were you a husband before? Is that how you know? Did your wife die?”

He said nothing, he didn’t have to. She just knew. 

“Did you give her something like this?” She held up the necklace. 

Max hesitated, shook his head. He flexed his left hand and worked his tongue at the backs of his teeth, swallowed more water. 

“No? What’d you give her? Or did you just have a ceremonial.”

“I don’t—“

She looked at him eager and somehow upset, gripping the little piece of glass and the bullet casings as I her life depended on it. 

His breath shook; “A ring… It—it was a ring.” 

“A ring? That’s it?” 

He nodded. 

“Did you make it?”

“No… It—“ He scratched his neck again, hunched his shoulders forward. “’was my mother’s.” 

She blinked at him, her head tilting slowly to the side. “What was your tribe like?”

His mouth opened and closed, his head shook. “We—uh—we lived in a city… Long way from here. Lots of tribes living in one place.” 

She nodded; “Did they all come to your ceremonial?”

He shook his head again; “No.”

“What was it like?” 

He ground his teeth, shoulders hunched forward defensively. Said nothing.

Toast leaned back against the arm rest of the sofa, draped the string of the necklace around her knee and arranged the casings and glass pendant so the sunlight caught them. “Joe had us dressed up in black… made a big speech about how we was formed in the ashes of the world and he was lifting us up and making us clean… Bab-tized us. Then we were scrubbed all over and painted up and he only let us wear white after that. Because we were ‘clean’ now. Holy or whatever… Then we had to bleed twice before…” She didn’t say anything else. 

Max’s nose was wrinkled; “That’s not a wedding.” 

Toast looked at him from the corner of her eye. 

Max rubbed his fingertips together; “Did you say anything?”

“No.”

“Did you agree to anything?”

Her brows pulled down. “No.”

“Then it wasn’t a wedding… Weddings—you’ve got to agree to it… it—it’s an agreement, not a-a—“ He flapped his hand and made a spluttering noise, gesturing violently toward the stone and the vault around them because he had no words vile enough for what Joe had done. 

Toast snorted, pulled her lip back into her mouth and chewed on it, let it go redder than before. 

Max took a deep breath and rubbed at his bandages. He seemed diminished, “We had a chuppa.” 

Toast’s nose crinkled and she shook her head; “A what?”

“A special canopy,” He made a box like gesture and spread his hands above it to indicate the roof. “It—“ His face became slightly red, “It represents the—uhm—the home a couple will make together.” 

“Like a tent?”

“Kind of… we had one of those… and a—“ He fumbled for the words. It had been so long he didn’t know if he could remember. Didn’t know if the faces and voices would let him. “—a Ketubah—a marriage agreement that we both signed—“

“Like a contract?” She folded her arms over her knee and blinked at him; “Why do you need a contract to be married?”

“It’s a promise—uh—a promise that the—the husband will take care of the wife and never hurt her, and—”

And Toast’s face did something strange, a rapid fire flutter of emotion. Curiosity, disbelief, amazement, and hope. “You can do that? Make them promise not to hurt you?”

“That’s how a real marriage works… You’re not supposed to hurt one another—you—you’re supposed to love each other,” He gestured vaguely at the world around them; “Suppos’ to help one another and be supportive, if you’re sick or hurt or pregnant. Supposed to work together in everything, not what—what He did… That—that wasn’t marriage. That wasn’t love. That was something else.” 

Toast’s eyes dropped, lit on the bandages at Max’s middle, then back to his face. She leaned back again, gave one of the bullet casings on the necklace a flip. 

Max eyed the stairs again, pressed a hand hard against his crotch.

Toast glanced at him, snorted out a laugh and lifted her brows at him in amusement; “You gotta piss?”

“Yes.”

She rolled to her feet, offered her shoulder as a bolster as he stood, his legs trembling from the strain— and gave him a little shove toward the other side of the dome. “There’s a sand trap under the drain. You can go there.”

“There’s glass here! They can see me!” He motioned to the Needle and the lookout perch. 

“They’re too focused on the horizon to look at your shit. Or at least they should be,” She turned her back to him as he balanced along the wall, shuffling slowly toward the drain. He grumbled and cursed under his breath. 

Toast crouched and plucked a few berries off one of the little stunted bushes and popped them between her lips. Hummed in satisfaction and tried not to giggle at the sound of Max’s water releasing. He practically groaned.

She only turned when she heard him moving again, soft splashes as he washed his hands in the fountain. 

She stood, dusted her hands on her trousers and eyed him, licking the taste of berries from her lips. “How’d you do it? Get married.”

He looked at her, face pinched a little in discomfort as he moved without aid. “You want that? To—to marry him? Spaz?”

Her jaw twitched and she crossed her arms, glanced left and right. “I dunno… He—he’s different.”

“You love him?”

“He’s my friend… And he’s a good lancer. And driver… He’s good at making things too. I—“ She pulled her lip back into her mouth and let it go. Nodded.

Max sighed heavily, rubbed his palm over his face and motioned her to him. Kept a hand on her shoulder as he made his way back to the sofa. 

0-0-0

“Was it a big bottle?”

“No… no, a little thing—a cup—a vessel really. Ours was green.” 

“But why break it? Glass is rare.”

“Wasn’t at the time… There was a man in the city who made it.”

“So, he made you this green glass—this little vessel, just for you to break?”

He rubbed his brow tiredly; “It’s a good thing, it MEANS something. We kept it… had a little box. It was special.”

“It’s all symbolic then? Everything means something important?”

“Yes… It—“ 

He sounded tired, or sad, Furiosa couldn’t decide which. Maybe both. She paused inside the vault, listening. She could smell the bitter sweet smoke coming from the garden. Imagined Max down there with the pipe talking—Actually talking. She’d not heard him use so many words at once before. 

“—It’s very special…”

“Like a god thing?”

“Sort of…”

“So we—we can’t do it like that?”

“No.”

“Can we have one of the agreement things? Is that something we could do? And the special words?”

“Yeah… This—It should mean something, to both of you. What you choose to do should—it should mean something more than just the actions… Like the casings, they mean something…”

Toast was quiet a moment, thoughtful. “We can make our own ceremonial? Our own traditions?”

Max didn’t say anything, but Furiosa could imagine him nodding. Rattling his brain around in his skull. 

“It’s more than just an excuse to—to mate or kiss. It—it means something. It means not being lonely, not having to fight alone.”

It was quiet, so quiet, and Furiosa felt for the first time, like she was intruding on something private. She stepped back out into the hall, made her footfalls heavy as she re-entered the vault. Called out; “Max? I brought food,” and headed for the stairs. 

Toast met her on the way down, face pink and something shiny half hidden in her hand. She ducked under Furiosa’s arms and away. 

Max was on the sofa, absently scratching at his belly. 

“What did I tell you about scratching it?”

“It ITCHES,” He didn’t stop, had the stem of the pipe between his teeth, a haze of bitter smoke lingering in the air around him.

“Your hands are filthy, you’re going to end up with an infection.”

“’s worth it.”

Furiosa sat the tray down on the side table, Toast must have brought it down from above. “Mari sent fruit, and soup.”

Max already had the soup in his hands, spooning it quickly to his mouth. He spoke while he chewed, rather inelegantly; “Where’s ‘at boy… Spaz?”

Furiosa stole another cherry out of the bowl of fruit; “Hmm? Oh. He left on a patrol this morning. He’ll be back tomorrow at sundown.”

Max hummed, noncommittally. 

“This have anything to do with him kissing Toast this morning?”

Max lifted his eyes, kept eating; “You know about that?”

“Dunny saw them.”

“You angry?”

“No… Unless she didn’t want it.”

Max nodded, scraped the bottom of his bowl; “Think she wants it… Just scared… cause of—“ He cleared his throat, didn’t speak the old bastard’s name.

Furiosa sighed, sat the cherry pit on the tray, making a little pile of them. She reached for another, but hesitated, lowered her chin while meeting Max’s eyes, asking without words if he wanted one of them. 

He shook his head, motioned to the strawberries.

Furiosa popped another in her mouth, “As long as he’s kind I think it’s a good match… What were you going to do? Threaten him?”

“No… Just talk.” 

“Just talk.”

He hummed, sat the empty bowl aside and scooped up some of the strawberries. Pinched off the leaves and stems and sighed happily while he chewed; “Had my guts fondled a few days ago… I’m all out of threats.”

“Hmm,” She took one of the ploppers from between his fingers and popped it whole into her mouth; “Well, you do the talking… I’ll stand there and look threatening.” 

He grunted, nodded, ate like he was starving. 

Furiosa chuckled, went to refill his cup with water. “You should slow down. It’s not going anywhere.” 

He watched her move, eyes glassy from the smoke, face flushed. 

“I take it you’re feeling better?”

He nodded, took a deep breath and scanned the horizon while twisting the stem and leaves off another plopper.

“Feel like taking a walk later?”

He was quiet for half a breath, thinking, then nodded. “Need to move… been sleeping too long.” 

“You’re not going to waste away just from resting—“

“Difference between resting and convalescing… Can’t walk from here to there without help,” He motioned to the other end of the dome where the sand trap was. 

Furiosa nodded, stole another berry from him and grinned impishly when he scowled at her in exasperation. 

“Okay,” She pulled the leaves off as she bit into it, flicked them at him playfully; “Dag wanted you to come see the gardens later. Some of her pups are graduating to Green Thumbs… She’s going to have a ceremonial and everything.” 

Max cocked up an eyebrow, lips curving into a grin around his cup. 

“It gives them a sense of purpose and accomplishment. They’re living for continuing LIFE now, not death historic,” Furiosa took a drink of her own water and pinched the cup between her knees while she tightened one of the straps on her prosthetic. “You’ll need a shirt though.”

Max nodded. It would be nice to be dressed again; “And boots?”

She shook her head, “Only feet on the greens… Dag’s rule, not mine.” 

Max looked at his feet, face scrunching up in displeasure.

“Don’t worry… I think you’ll like it.”

He looked up at her, wary.

Furiosa grinned, broad and sly; “We have grass.”

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End file.
